


Pusher

by M_arahuyo



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: AU Origins, Action, Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Angst, Depression, Drama, F/F, Growing Up, I love alt-j, Lena-centric, Orphans AU, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Romance, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide Attempt, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2018-11-29 13:20:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 65,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11441751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_arahuyo/pseuds/M_arahuyo
Summary: Lena doesn't want to be left behind. She doesn't want them to go.But then, she realizes, everyone alwaysgoes,and she doesn't want to have to cry for each of themeach time.So she doesn't, unless she has to.She doesn't, until someone pushes her to.(An origins AU that spans many years focusing on Lena, following her journey from orphan to hero.)





	1. please wait by the line

_If you're willing to wait for the love of your life_  
_Please wait by the line_  
_And you know dispersive prisms rainbow_  
_But my native optimism isn't broken by the light_

 _The idea of life without company fell suddenly_  
_It crashed through the ceiling on me_  
_And pinned me to the pine_  
_And layer upon layer of hope and doubt_  
_[Will crush bones to oil in time](https://youtu.be/QTO_KHF1ch0)_

***

 

Lena doesn't cry when the letter comes for her mother and her mother starts to bawl. She doesn't cry when her mother holds her, tells her  _hush, hush, love, it's alright_ and she asks her mother, why wouldn't it be alright? They have dinner on the table, half a roasted chicken, and her father will be home in two weeks. She smiles, too, as she says this, and her mother tries to return it. Tries. 

She still doesn't cry when her mother strokes her face, tells her slowly that one of those things is now untrue. She doesn't cry when she understands, and her mother sees her understand and starts to cry again. 

They have dinner, a noisy dinner, with her mother weeping and her own heartbeat too loud in her ears. She cleans up for them both, sends her mother to bed with the tablets she usually takes to help her sleep, and goes to her room herself. 

She stays up that night six years old and fatherless. 

 

* * *

 

Lena doesn't cry, too, when she's seven and watching inspectors go through her mother's things. A police officer is asking her questions and she's answering as politely as she can until one inspector–with a stupid moustache and a lousy combover–heaves open a trunk of her father's things. 

"No one touches those!" she bellows with surprising volume, making her throat hurt and her chest constrict. She convinces herself that's just her voice and not her own emotions that are doing those to her. Swinging off her stool, she bounds toward the shocked inspector and snatches the thing in his hand. The blue-grey uniform–with the studded stars and the hero's medals, the glinting pins and shiny cuff links–goes back into the trunk and she pulls it shut, keeping her hands on the lid territorially. 

The inspector steps back and shoots his partner a look, his moustache twitching with the movement of his lips. His partner, a thin man with an interesting face of bones and thin lips shakes his head and walks into her mother's bedroom. 

Lena doesn't leave the trunk, instead choosing to sit on top of it completely. The police officer understands enough, Lena thinks, that she just follows Lena and pulls her stool with her to sit close by. 

"And how was your mother these past few days, Lena?" the police officer asks. She looks up when Lena doesn't answer, and Lena pretends she wasn't staring at the doorway to her mother's room. 

"She was fine. Cooked me roast chicken last night, she did. Just the half, always the half," Lena answers easily, politely. In hindsight, she probably should have realized something was off, then. They haven't had roast chicken since she was six.   

"Was she sleeping easily?" 

Lena tilts her head, "well, yeah. She's got medicine for her sleep," like it's obvious, like it's common knowledge, like everyone's mothers and their mothers' mothers worked that way. The police officer nods her head and writes on her notebook. 

"And how was she when you came back from school yesterday, Lena? Other than her being able to cook you roast chicken? Did she tell you anything?" 

"She told me good night, like she always does," Lena answers, growing increasingly exasperated. And then she pauses, thinks something through, and adds, "she also told me to be good. I think she meant good sleep, or good dreams, I think she was feeling too sleepy." 

"Do you have family close by, Lena? Or any family you know of at all?" 

"I don't know–well, no. Pro'bly not." Lena looks at her lap and chews her lip, a sting in her chest making her grasp a knee. She swallows. "I remember my parents telling me they came from far away–from Poland, I think? I remember because my dad made a joke about the word _polish_ –and they never told me 'bout nothin' like that, no." 

The police officer glances up at her once. She's frowning, Lena notices. She writes that down regardless, thanks Lena for her cooperation, and reports to her superiors. 

Lena swings her legs idly as she stays seated on top of her father's trunk. She watches her feet go forward and back. She listens as the people in her mother's bedroom talk about overdosing and suicide and depression. 

She doesn't understand most of it, but she understands enough. 

She doesn't cry. 

 

* * *

 

The social worker comes in very few hours. He's a big man with a wide jaw and a healthy belly, and when he laughs Lena thinks he draws  _all that air_ from deep in his gut. He carries her suitcases for her–they're not a lot, actually, just one large one and one small one–and walks in a jitterbug kind of way that reminds Lena of wind-up toys. When Lena lags behind him, lost in thought and prayers and fear, he stops and turns around all wind-up toy-like until he's facing her. Lena's neck is flushed when she jogs ahead of him. 

"Hang on, hang on! 'Ey!" His shout is as loud as his laugh, and Lena winces, smiles apologetically at a passing old lady who frowns at them both. Lena looks down at her feet when the social worker catches up. The shadow of him shades her from the sun completely, wow, and she pretends her scuffy sneakers are incredibly fascinating. 

"Are you hungry?" he asks after about thirty good seconds of the awkward silence. Lena tilts her head–strains her neck, really–to look at his face. He's smiling, eyes crinkled at the corners, sunlight leaking through the gaps of his earlobes to sheen the slopes of his neck. When she only fidgets, he laughs that great, loud belly laugh of his. Lena doesn't know what's so funny, but she feels herself giggling all the same. 

The social worker steps back. Lena squints at the sunlight. "You're hungry," he concludes. Lena decides he's a funny man. "Let's eat, mm? I'll take you to eat. You'll need lots of strength. Lots of muscles in your legs. We're gonna be doing lots of walking." 

He leads them about two blocks before charging into a quaint little diner like a bloody tank. "Sit, sit!" he tells her jovially, and Lena doesn't know if it's the excitement of his smile or the mad glint in his eye that makes her sit. She watches him approach the counter, slap his hand on the countertop no less than nine times in a span of only thirty seconds and comes to sit opposite her. 

Lena can complain about his volume and his energy all she wants, but she can't complain about his taste in food. Two servings of fish and chips later and she's stuffed to silence. It takes the social worker clearing his throat for her to quit smiling wistfully like an idiot. 

"You're a strong girl," he tells her. Oh, so he's capable of respectable volumes. "Brave girl, like your dad. Heard he was a good pilot." Lena doesn't meet his eyes and almost wishes he'll stop talking about this. " _Smart girl,_ like your mum. Oh, I've seen your report cards, I have. Good marks. Great marks." He winks at her. "Keep at it, mm? You'll see only few of us are destined for great things, and those few are the ones who know how to work hard. So eat lots, mm? Build muscle. Build brains, mm?  _Mmm?_ " 

Lena nods, pretends she knows what he's saying. It's good enough because he grins that bright, wide grin of his and they barrel out of the diner the way they came. 

The trip to the orphanage– _orphanage_ , Lena's chest grows tight to think the word–is simple, up until the last part. The social worker drives them to the countryside and Lena watches the scenery of green, and hills, and gravel roads, until they stop at the foot of a hill surrounded by picket fences and flowerbeds. The social worker whips his head in a gesture to follow and Lena jogs after him as best as she could. 

She  _may have_ nearly passed out, once or twice, from exhaustion as they ascended the many, many stairs to the house at the top. When they get there, the social worker knocks for them both and flashes her a cheeky smile as they wait. 

Lena doesn't listen as he exchanges hushed words with the person who opens the door. She focuses on the sound of children's voices inside, and the smell of the countryside, and how different everything is from King's Row and its noises and bustling and rushing. The social worker taps her on the shoulder to get her attention, and she doesn't look at his face as he hands her her suitcases. 

"Brave girl," he murmurs, patting the top of her head, the unruly brown hair going to her shoulders and curling up in cowlicks. "Smart girl. In you go." 

And Lena only then realizes, she doesn't want him to go. 

But then, she remembers, everyone just  _goes._

She didn't even get his name. 

She doesn't cry. 

 

* * *

 

The orphanage's headmistress is a well-spoken woman with gray hair and bright blue eyes that shine with quiet intelligence. She asks for Lena's name despite knowing already, probably, and Lena was taught to be polite and kind and friendly, so she says, "Lena, ma'am," with a sure smile and sweaty palms. 

"Lena," the headmistress says with a tight smile. She puts a hand to her chest. "I'm Patricia, but you can call me Patty." She takes Lena's bigger suitcase in one hand and Lena's hand in the other, and walks her around the house to see the rooms and meet the other kids. 

Most of them are scruffy-looking kids like her, like puppies left on the street and eventually found and placed in a nice, warm litter next to other puppies. The young ones give her loud hello's and ask her to play–Patty lightly declines for her, Lena needs to rest, she says–and they couldn't be older than five or six. Lena's smiling but she wants to get out of here already. 

The older ones give her impassive looks and absent hums when Patty introduces her. They're cross-armed kids playing chess, or watching TV, or gossiping, in the case of the three girls sitting on the dining table. One girl glances at her, a cute kid with red hair and freckles on her cheeks. Lena doesn't look at her for too long because Patty is leading her up to the bedrooms. 

Her quarters is a small one. A bunk bed sits in one corner and then dressers in the other. There are two desks and two chairs next to each other, and a mirror hung haphazardly with a rope on a nail sticking out on the wall. The top bunk is unkempt, she notices. 

"You have a roommate, Lena, although I don't know where she's gone..." Patty sets her suitcase down and smiles at her fleetingly. "You get settled down, okay? Supper is at six, you come down if you want to, then. I'll have some new sheets sent up soon." 

Lena shuts the door after Patty and nearly gives herself a concussion tripping over her suitcases. She falls on the bottom bunk and buries her face on the pillow that smells like dust and mothballs. She closes her eyes and clutches the bare mattress. 

It's not the smell of home. Of her mother and father or even her own bed, but she tells herself, this is the smell of home now. 

She wants to cry.

 

* * *

 

It's dark by the time Lena wakes up. 

Or, gets woken up. The house is old, Patty has told her that during the tour earlier today–or yesterday, she thinks, if it's past midnight–and the hinges squeak when someone swings it open and closed. 

" _No going out for you for the next week, you understand?_ "

Patty, voice from floors below, sounds angry. The girl at the door murmurs, I _understand, I understand_ in an accent Lena would've found intriguing if she wasn't so sleepy and her nose didn't feel so itchy from breathing into a dusty pillow. 

The girl wanders around a bit and flicks a switch–oh, so there's a night light–before approaching the bunks and removing her shoes. Her face is sidelit by the feeble glow of the night light and all Lena can see with the angle is an arisocratic nose and the bump of a high cheekbone. Lena yawns just as the girl is getting ready to climb up to the top bunk and she freezes, looking at Lena. 

Lena stares back at the stark golden eyes that stare at her. 

A heartbeat. A shuffle of feet and the girl continues hiking herself up the top bunk. She tosses something down and Lena gets a faceful of fabric. 

" _Oi!_ " 

"Your sheets," comes the accented voice. Silky in the way melted chocolate is. "Use them if you do not want to wake up with sniffles." 

Lena huffs like  _yeah right_ and places the offending sheets at her feet, indignant. She can be damn proud if she wants to be. Not even an apology? Really? Rude. She rolls to her other side and settles. 

She doesn't know if the girl stays up as long as she did because the top bunk keeps twitching with movement, and twitches still as she sighs her resign and closes her eyes. 

She can't cry.

 

* * *

 

The top bunk is empty when Lena wakes up that morning (with sniffles, she refuses to admit.) The sheets at least are tidied and the blanket folded this time. 

She begrudgingly puts on the sheets for her own bunk and fluffs her pillow free of dust before slipping it in a pillowcase. Settling that, she heads downstairs for breakfast. 

Patty has a twin brother, she learns then, and  _Patrick_ –she tries not to snicker–can cook a mean omelette, he can. He has the same gray hair, the same sharpness to his eyes, but the color of his are more green than blue. He doesn't ask questions like his sister, and Lena wonders if they're being kind or selfish. If they don't want the kid to relive it, or just really don't want to know. 

She wonders, too, when she started thinking like this. 

She goes to the backyard where the other kids are once she's washed her plate and utensils. A few of the young ones from yesterday tell her good morning and she ruffles the hair of one with pale, pale skin and missing two front teeth. She tries saying hi to some her age and they greet her back, but even she can tell they're not up for playing _friendly_ with the new kid right now. 

The girl with the red hair and freckles spots her, though, and smiles shyly at her. She waves Lena over. Lena would've gone–there's a happy jolt in her belly at the thought of company–but a little further off there's a tree, and a tire swing, and a girl with long legs and long hair swinging idly. 

An apologetic smile and she sets off jogging. 

She walks around the tree, dragging a hand along its bark, palm flat on jagged wood. Her head sticks out first and then her foot like testing the waters, and the girl on the tire swing sighs like something like this  _always happens_ and really needs to stop. 

"Why ain'cha over there with the other kids?" Lena ventures, because friendly is her middle name ( _not quite_ ) and her parents raised her that way. 

The girl moves her head only a little, just to show an aristocratic nose and a high cheekbone. Her skin reminds Lena of caramel, flawless and smooth caramel, and her legs, long and gangly, stop swaying. 

"Why?" 

"...what? Why  _what?_ "

The girl whips her head to face Lena and she's frowning, her eyes as sharp as her eyebrows. "Why are you here? Why do you bother?  _Will you not leave me alone?_ " 

Lena blinks stupidly at least three times before shaking her head, frowning. "I don't get what you mean here, love." 

"You kids  _always_ do this," the girl seethes, and Lena realizes with a flash of panic that oh no  _oh no_ her mouth is trembling and her eyes are watering and she might _cry._ "You torment me when I come close, and torment me still when I try to get far away. Why do you do this?" 

Lena blinks again. She's doing lots of blinking with this girl. "I... uh, I was just genuinely wondering." 

It's the girl's turn to blink. She moves her jaw like she's rolling words in her mouth, a thoughtful wrinkle between her brows. When she speaks, she sounds cautious. "Oh... okay." 

"I'm Lena." 

"I am... Amélie." 

Lena nods her head and smiles, really really smiles at the girl, who stares at her like she's waiting for something bad to happen. And then Lena scowls, glancing toward the other kids. 

"You mean to tell me they bully you, love? Have we got bullies here?" 

"Bully?"  _Amélie_ repeats, more to herself and Lena has to look back to her. Amélie eventually shakes her head and resumes swinging. "It is... not important. Let them be." 

There's a restrained, uncertain way to how Amélie talks, Lena realizes. She slackens and asks, without thinking, "haven't got the hang of the old English yet, have you?" and when Amélie frowns, "oh no, no, don't mean anything by it. Deeply sorry. Was just... blabbering without thinking, I'll try to keep that to a minimum." 

Amélie doesn't reply. When Lena moves to sit on the grass by her legs and she doesn't protest, Lena guesses she took that apology well. 

"You are... we are..." Amélie pauses with that thought wrinkle between her brows again. "Roommates. Roommates, mm?" 

"Oh, yeah yeah, we are. Threw the sheets on my face last night." 

"I am sorry." Amélie shrugs. "I was trying to... prevent the sniffles." 

Lena giggles at that and Amélie kind of chuckles. Or, she guesses that was a chuckle. "Well, thank you for looking out for me. You're a real nice roommate." 

"No, I just did not want to catch the sniffles from you also." 

That gets Lena laughing. When she looks to Amélie, Amélie is actually smiling, swinging gleefully on the tire swing and... okay, that's pretty great. That looks great. 

 

They spend the rest of the morning together after that. Lena thinks they look kind of funny together or something, Lena in her baggy shirt and shorts and Amélie in her small shirts and too-short leggings, showing a lot more of her ankles than they should. Lena decides that's probably because Amélie is older and she keeps growing, limbs too gangly and body stretching like taffy. A thin length of a tummy's brown skin shows whenever Amélie reaches to brush her hair up. It occurs to Lena that they ought to swap clothes some time. 

Amélie doesn't lag behind in conversation despite her difficulty with English. She's quite smart, actually. So smart that she overthinks Lena's joke about butter flying out of the window– _butterfly,_ heh–and Lena has to tell her to relax and there's no fancy science around that. 

She must have been a bookish child before the orphanage. There just isn't a good library around here, or one with Philosophy or Physics volumes, at least. 

"I still think the butter will not actually be  _flying,_ " Amélie maintains, and Lena sighs in exasperation, a tuft of unruly hair dangling on her face swaying with her breath. "Flying implies it is doing so with autonomy, no? Or it is under someone's consistent control–take aircraft, mm? Gliding, more like. Is that right? I feel like I may be wrong." 

"Alright, love, alright. Butterglide then." 

Their table trembles when Amélie kicks Lena's foot. Lena yelps, pulls her feet away protectively. Amélie is smirking. 

She's showing Lena how to braid hair with some old dolls they found in the rec room's toy box. Lena was never one for dolls and pink things but the hair braiding itself is fascinating. The tip of her tongue sticks out with her preoccupation and Amélie notices that, with a little laugh. "Like a puppy. It is cute," she clarifies. Lena withdraws her tongue with flushed ears. 

She's not preoccupied enough to not notice when some of the older kids glance their way and snicker amongst themselves as they go. They whisper and giggle, and Lena would've asked questions if not for the tension on Amélie's shoulders and the tight purse of her lips. She must be used to this. Must have endured enough of it to know not to mind them. 

Kids can be such big jerks. 

"Come," Amélie says eventually, just as Lena's getting the hang of braiding. She sets her doll down with a gentleness contrasting the stiffness of her jaw. Lena drops her doll with curious eyes. "Let us eat lunch while it is a little early." 

That doesn't make sense to Lena until they reach the dining room. They're the only kids around eating about 15 minutes earlier than the designated lunch time. Patrick serves them with a knowing kind of silence that makes Lena inexplicably angry. 

"Why don't they do anything about it? Patty and Patrick?" Lena asks tightly when Amélie leads them out of the dining room as kids start pouring in. Amélie didn't even get to finish her food. 

"Because they know children only tend to do worse when scolded. It is... out of spite, mm." 

Lena doesn't bloody get that at all. 

Patty finds them like that, in silence, on their way to the backyard and tuts loudly. Amélie freezes with bunched shoulders and a low head. She doesn't turn around. Lena looks at Patty in question but Patty ignores her. 

Patty clears her throat. Amélie looks at her feet. "What did I say about your going out?" she asks curtly. Lena notices Amélie's hands fisted around her leggings. 

Before Amélie could turn around and walk back into the house, Lena makes a sound like a yelp and Patty looks at her sharply. 

"Amélie is showing me around," she tries lousily. She swallows and scratches the back of her head. "Around the uh... the backyard. Yeah. This... complicated bit of area right here." She gestures to the wide, virtually empty backyard behind them. Amélie's tire swing is swaying in the distance. "I... yeah, she's showing me around." 

Patty doesn't move, doesn't say anything, but when Lena reaches to furl her hand around Amélie's and pull her further out into the yard without a scolding, she decides it's okay and keeps walking. 

A smile is on Patty's face, Lena notices, as she turns to go deeper into the house. 

 

Amélie is quiet as she climbs onto her bunk that same night. Lena doesn't bother her and gets into her own bunk. She lies with her hands behind her head, staring at the wood of the top bunk. 

"Good night, Lena," comes Amélie's voice some time later. 

"Good night, Amélie." 

Lena is almost certain the both of them stay up for the next few hours. 

 

* * *

 

Lena gets into a fight two weeks later. 

It's a big guy, it is. A big guy probably older than her, with chipped front teeth and filthy brown hair sticking out in all directions. The other kids are chanting  _fight fight fight_ and Lena feels her fists tremble when the boy laughs and punches his own palm for show. 

She growls and shuffles to her feet, dusting grass and dirt off her ruddy yellow shorts. The hems reach past her knees. She feels a scrape on her elbow and a bruise starting to form on her left cheek, and blood on her nose and lips and a moving tooth,  _oh bloody hell,_ but she lunges forward with a cry anyway and swings her arms, wildly, managing to get the boy on his fat, ugly face and his thick neck. 

The boy pushes her back easily and lands a punch on her shoulder. She falls back down. 

"Oi, get her!" 

"Who's she think she is, eh? Look at those pencil arms!" 

"Punch her again!" 

The boy looks all too pleased to oblige and Lena shuts her eyes, protecting her head. 

All cheering stops when a voice she recognizes as Patrick's yells from across the backyard. The other kids scamper but the boy with the chipped teeth freezes, fist already raised. He must realize he should be running, _the dolt_ , and makes to do exactly that but Patrick snatches him by the collar of his shirt and pulls him with enough force to lift him off the ground. 

"What'chu think you doing, eh?" he shouts, like really  _shouts,_ and the boy cowers and Lena curls into herself. Patrick yells and yells and  _yells,_ and Lena almost doesn't notice a hand holding her forearms. She turns, sees the redheaded girl with the freckles (and wide, wide eyes, she realizes) looking at her with scared concern. 

"You alright?" the girl asks shakily, and Lena nods blankly. Lena's being hoisted up the next second and she's suddenly looking at Amélie, tears in her eyes and cheeks and snot stuck to her top lip. 

" _You fool!_ " Amélie shouts, and even Patrick quits his yelling to look at her, wide-eyed. "Imbecile! Stupid!  _Merde,_ what did you do that for?" She looks like she might slap Lena, actually, and Lena's in her right mind to look apologetic.  _Amusedly_ apologetic, but still. She sniffs, haphazardly wipes snot away with her forearm and settles with slapping Lena on her arm. "I told you to ignore them! Now look! Oh,  _dieu,_ now look at you!" 

Lena shrugs and mumbles something along the lines of  _couldn't let them get away with it_ and Amélie huffs with so much exasperation you'd think she's Lena's mother. 

When Patty comes running toward them, Amélie starts explaining in lightning speed about the older kids, about them telling her she's stupid and doesn't know English and oh, _hell_ , it makes Lena _so angry_ all over again, but she concentrates on Amélie's nonEnglish slips and manages to stay calm. 

"Is this true?" Patty asks the boy flatly. Patrick is holding the boy up like he's about to drop him in lava and will laugh evilly about it after. The boy doesn't answer but the redheaded girl on the side says yes, says so were some other older boys and older girls and Lena only tried to tell them to stop when he started pushing her and punched. 

Patty's eyes narrow to slits. Her nostrils flare, and Lena imagines steam coming out of them like an angry dragon. She takes the boy by the arm and drags him back into the house. Patrick, in turn, takes Lena's and Amélie's hands to lead them back, too. 

Lena manages a smile at the redheaded girl, who stays behind and smiles back. 

A few days later, when most of Lena's bruises have healed and her nose doesn't hurt as much anymore, the pain of her loose, infected tooth gets too much and she tries taking it out herself. Amélie goes looking for her in the communal bathrooms when she disappears that night. She holds Lena's jaw and gives Lena a meaningful look before pulling the tooth out with a wet  _pop._

Lena collapses forward into Amélie and clutches her mouth, writhing and whimpering. Blood and spit trickle through the gaps of her fingers. Amélie holds her patiently, whispering  _imbecile_ with warm fondness. 

Lena won't cry.

 

* * *

 

"My father was a pilot," Lena is telling Amélie one afternoon as they sit under Amélie's tire swing tree, Lena's left and Amélie's right feet meeting. She's telling Amélie this because they've been friends for two months, maybe three, and they don't know the facts about each other yet. "A pilot for the RAF. He fought against the omnics in the air over Cambridge. They shot him down and his body and plane were never found." 

The first stars are winking at them from the spot in the sky where dark blue and deep russet are meeting. Lena remembers a time when she watched her dad's Fighter soar through the clouds and the blue, blue sky during a demonstration in London and standing alongside her mum yelling,  _that's my dad, that's my dad!_ Her mum had been so thrilled and so proud and so happy, applauding as the fighter tore through clouds again and again. 

Ironic that a month later, her mother came home with bottles of medicine and a weak smile. She'd never been well again since her dad was sent to war against the omnics. Always scared and jumpy and mumbling, _what if he never comes back?_

"He was amazing, my dad. You should've seen him drive that fighter of his. He's up one moment and then swooping down and  _whoosh,_ " Lena says with feeling, using her hand to demonstrate. Amélie smiles at her. Lena doesn't know if Amélie notices her hand shaking. "I want to be like him. A pilot, I mean," not _dead,_ she really means, "and I'm going to be so good at it they'll promote me to–to the highest rank there is for a pilot." 

"What about your mother?" Amélie asks quietly. Lena swallows and takes a few seconds to answer. 

"She was a professor. Maths, I think." She licks her lips, dry all of a sudden. "My dad used to teased her about how she was the smartest of her class in the University of Cambridge. She was brilliant, my mum. So smart. She used to help me with school. Stopped teaching at that, to be with me at home. Taught me to cook some, too." 

She blinks, starts picking at a loose thread on her shorts to have some excuse to look down. "When my dad got sent to war, she got... real sad. She took medications because she couldn't sleep. Or... whenever she got to fall asleep, she had nightmares. The medicines took away her appetite, though. She got real thin, my mum." 

Holding a length of thread between her fingers, Lena chances a glance up, through her scraggly bangs and sees Amélie nodding quietly. Lena swallows. "She committed suicide a year after my dad died. Took all her medicine in one go. There was foam in her mouth. I called the police." 

They're quiet after that. Lena watches Patty step out of the house and herd the younger kids inside. The older ones hang behind and disperse into their own groups of friends. The handful few who are determinedly ignored shuffle about before going into the house. Why do people get so... selfish as they grow older? 

"My mama was a sickly woman," Amélie murmurs. Lena stops all movement to listen. Concentrates with furrowed brows. "She had had... _condition_ , a condition since she was little. With her heart. Her heart was too little, they said." 

Lena waits for it despite knowing what already happened. "She died when I was eight. And then my papa took us here from France. To start fresh, he said. So he could forget about my mama and move on. 

"I did not want to. I had friends back home–in Annecy–and I didn't know how to say one good sentence in English, but I had to go with my papa." 

Amélie is looking at the grass like it holds all the answers to the questions about life's miseries. Lena nudges her with her body, their shoulders bumping. She smiles. "You don't have to tell me more. You don't have to tell me anything." 

But Amélie shakes her head and continues. "He taught French in a school in London. We lived in a... a small apartment. I had a room but he slept on the couch. We would often get angry strangers knocking on the door yelling about his debts, and he would always hide me under the kitchen sink while he spoke to them. He got hurt a lot." 

It's dark now. Stars are on the sky in generous sprinkles. You never saw stars in King's Row. There, there was too much artificial light and noise and you wouldn't be able to see stars even if you climbed on top the highest building. Lena appreciates stars now. 

"But he was a good man. He had a good heart. Had his heart for everything. He used to tell me that with everything I should have heart. Kindness. That..." Amélie rolls the words in her mouth, transposing her mother tongue. "If I were to be angry, let it be from kindness. The compassion for people who are suffering. That I be angry for them. 

"He protested the violence, you know. The... vigilante tactics of attacking even docile, citizen omnics. He believed they had no part in it–" 

"How could they have no part in it?" Lena cuts off, the red of her face from anger and embarrassment. Amélie looks at her with calm eyes. Lena lets the opened wounds of a dead father and a dead mother fester. "They're–they're omnics! They're parts of those... those brutes that've burned down cities and killed people! They should all be destroyed, the lot of them!" 

Amélie's expression is so calm, and kind, and patient, that Lena feels hot shame coloring her neck. She looks away sharply. 

"Kindness,  _ma passionné_ Lena," she says. "They are as much victims as we are. Or worse, because they're victims of their own kind and human kind. Even the hostile omnics killed their own in sieges." She folds her fingers together on her lap. "They did not choose to be omnics. Did not choose for their kind to turn to slaughter. They merely live and exist and work, as they should. No one should be attacked for what flesh they wear–artificial or no." 

A long moment of silence as they sit there. They hear the chirp of cicadas in the distance. "My father taught me that. It is the actions that define the being." 

"Kindness," Lena murmurs, and Amélie holds her hand and smiles. "Wh–what happened to him? Your papa?" 

"He was mauled to death by omnic haters. It took so long for the police and social services to contact me because they couldn't identify him by appearance, and they had stolen all his possessions," Amélie answers calmly. "I have been here since I was ten. I will be turning fifteen soon." 

Amélie releases Lena's hand and Lena realizes then just how much she...  _likes_ being touched by Amélie. Amélie stands up and dusts her skirt before gesturing for Lena to stand. Patty is standing on the backyard now, waving for them to come inside for supper. 

Amélie doesn't mind eating with the other kids now as long as Lena is with her. 

That night, Amélie doesn't climb to her bunk. She watches Lena lay on hers and asks, quietly, "do you cry, Lena?" and Lena takes so long to answer that Amélie just lies next to her, tucking her long limbs inward into herself so they could fit. She pulls Lena close. Lena lets the physical contact happen. 

She cries for hours.

They cry together. 

 

* * *

 

Amélie is a pusher, Lena realizes months and months more into their friendship. 

She's always pushing Lena. Tells her yes, Lena can conquer the monkey bars, yes, Lena can make the jump from the second storey window, _yes_ , Lena can be the pilot she wants so badly to be. 

And she's always on the sidelines, cheering as Lena does these things and always the first one to hug her and congratulate her and  _fawn_ over her when she's finished, whether Lena succeeds or no. And then, over dinner, she'll give Lena her observations and suggestions on how she could improve. Lift your knees higher when you run, she says. Swing more when on the monkey bars, she says, because momentum can be one's friend. " _Maybe never do that again_ ," she sheepishly says as Lena sits with a sprain after having leaped off their bedroom window. She squeaks when Patty hits her over the head with a rolled up newspaper. Lena manages to get a good laugh in before she's whacked upside the head by Patrick and his magazine, too. 

Lena doesn't know what to do with Amélie, really. There are no books and no schooling systems and academic competitions to push her toward. The orphanage doesn't come equipped with a school because government funds go to defenses, to armaments and the Armed Forces and measures taken to prevent another war. 

They've got a playground now, at least. A singular slide and a length of monkey bars isn't much of a playground but it's enough, Lena supposes. 

Lena has seen how Amélie looks into the rec room window during Tuesdays and Thursdays, though. Tuesdays and Thursdays, the rec room is closed to lounging and playing because they're when Patty holds her dancing classes. With salvaged records and makeshift bars, she teaches a good several number of kids ballet. Lena watches with the awe of a spectator, but Amélie's eyes are aglow with the wonder of one who wants to try. 

"Why don't you join them?" Lena tries to be the one pushing, for a change. Amélie shakes her head and looks away, willing her expression to impassiveness. 

"I do not have the shoes." 

And Lena goes  _ah,_ the one with the laces and the funny, blunt tip that some of the girls came to the orphanage with, reminiscent of a life before tragedy. 

"You could ask Patty for a pair?" 

"Shoes cost money, Lena. I have none." 

Lena sputters as Amélie walks past her nonchalantly. 

"Oi!  _Oi!_ What kind of bloody excuse is that?!" 

 

Patrick quirks his brow as Lena earnestly deposits several tens of quids onto his palm. He's sitting on his motorcycle headed for the nearest town, the carriage attached to the back filled with reusable bags and a list with Patty's dainty handwriting. 

"Where'd you get this money?" he asks suspiciously. It's a fair question. No kid in the orphanage has any source of money to speak of. 

Lena shrugs, smiles because Patrick isn't as scary as Patty, no, but he  _does_ tend to tell his sister everything. If it doesn't put him in trouble, anyway. "Gambling," she answers simply, and Patrick's eyebrows get very low. " _Oi_ , alright, listen. I only picked that habit up from the older kids. They play cards a lot, did you know? And they've got money to lose, too. Dunno where they got it, though." 

Patrick reddens and clears his throat in a way that tells Lena he's _definitely_ got something to do with that. He sees Lena's smirking look and huffs, folding his arms over his chest. "Didn't expect them to be so good at it, the little troublemakers. Always lose a couple of quids to them, I do. Now, what'chu say you want for this?" 

"Shoes. Dancing shoes. The ones Patty has and the other kids in her class. You know," Lena gestures haphazardly with her hands, "lacy, blunt tip thing, looks like it'd hurt to put on–" 

"Oh. Ballet shoes or sommat? _Pointe shoes_ I think my sister calls 'em." 

"Yeah,  _yeah,_ you got it! There's a good mate." 

Patrick runs a hand through his stubble. "What size am I gettin'?"

Mortified silence. Lena's face pales bad enough to make Patrick smirk, and for a second she thinks he'll give her the money back, but he pockets it. 

"S'for Amélie, innit?" he asks, and Lena doesn't know why she feels warm under his scrutinizing stare. " _Well?_ " A nod. "Right. We get all the kids here shoes every year. I know her size. Alright, get outta here now. Run back up to the house. _Get_." 

Later, Amélie cries happy tears when Lena hands it over. Lena wants to cry, too, for whatever stupid, sappy reason her body has but settles with nuzzling Amélie and swaying them when Amélie embraces her. 

Amélie kisses her on the cheek, close enough to the corner of her mouth that she feels faint moistness along there. She coughs to hide her face because it's  _burning,_ holy shite, and Amélie laughs this knowing little laugh and climbs up her bunk with her new shoes. 

Lena thinks about Amélie's feet and new shoes and happiness, and she feels like she's so filled with _something_ so warm that she wants to cry.

 

* * *

 

Lena watches Amélie dance every Tuesdays and Thursdays, for days, and then weeks, and then months. 

She was good at it from the beginning–a natural, Patty said–and she keeps getting better with each session, some tone and muscle and shape coming to her legs and her hips. Lena tries not to think about why she notices these things about Amélie. 

She's older, anyway. 16 now, Lena thinks, and those shapes coming to her are the shapes that come naturally to girls who are becoming women. She's less lanky now, less gangly, and instead she's grace and posture and curves. Lena doesn't miss how some of the boys Amélie's age look at Amélie now, eyes lingering with the kind of stickiness that fills her throat with heat and her belly with ice. 

She watches, always, just the same. 

"She's pretty, isn't she?" says a girl Lena's age one day, red hair longer and eyes wider. Lena finds those adorable. 

"She's always been," she says easily, pride in her chest and in her voice. If it wouldn't be so embarrassing to puff out her chest, she would. "That's my Amélie right there, yeah. Better than any of 'em. And _far_ more attractive." 

"It's really nice how you're kinda like sisters now. I remember when Amélie didn't have any friends and the other kids picked on her for her English a lot. You even got punched once, remember that?" 

Lena feels herself deflate. Her eyes go from the redheaded girl to Amélie in the rec room, doing stretches with Patty. "I... uh, yeah, sisters.  _Sistas._ Beautiful, mmhm." 

Off to the side, watching the rec room while stuffing his face with chips, Patrick pauses to observe Lena in her distress. Lena pretends everything is normal. 

"Ought to hop off now. That's me, always hopping off somewhere. I'll see ya some time, mm?" 

Lena leaves. She doesn't fully understand why she's clenching her fists. 

 

Patty turns the TV to the news that night. Almost immediately there's an explosion, and Lena watches in blank slow motion as a fighter gets shot down from the sky and crashes into a building.  _Remembering the Omnic Crisis,_ the banner below says.  _Remembering those who died._

Lena shuts her eyes and breathes, and stands up to wrest her way out of the crowd of kids around the TV to head up to her room. 

Amélie doesn't miss a thing, though. She's knocking on the door a minute later and Lena glances over her shoulder at her. Amélie tries out a smile. The long tail of her hair sweeps over her shoulder, caught up in a neat ponytail. "Are you okay?" 

"Mm," Lena says, and climbs into her bunk slowly enough to not seem in panic. "Shut the lights, will you, love? I've got a bit of a headache. Might as well sleep it off now." 

She thinks Amélie says something like  _okay_ before she turns the light off. She doesn't leave right away, though. Lena waits. 

"Good night, Lena." 

"Mm." 

The door, hinges squeaking and all, swings shut. Lena stares into the darkness with shallow breaths. 

Three years ago today, her father died. 

A year after that, her mother. 

 

Lena wakes up screaming. Someone is in the dark and has hands on her shoulders and she growls, whipping her hand in a sharp arc as she rears back. She hears a low yelp and a shocked whimper, and her eyes widen as she grasps the blanket around her. 

"...Amélie?" 

"Lena," Amélie confirms with a smile in her voice. The mattress shifts and Lena realizes Amélie's come closer. "You slapped me." 

"I–I'm sorry, I–"

"No, I startled you, I know." It's dark. They've stopped using the night light since Lena turned nine and insisted she's not afraid of dark. And she really isn't, but right now she's frightened, sweating, clothes clinging to her back and chest. 

The mattress bobs. "You were having a nightmare," Amélie ventures gently when Lena doesn't say anything. 

Lena nods, forgets Amélie can't see that in the dark. "Was I talking?" 

"Mm?"

"Talking. In my sleep." 

Amélie takes a moment to remember–or to think about how to say it, Lena doesn't know. "You were."

"What was I saying?"

"...You were calling for your mum and dad. Telling them not to leave you."

Lena nods to nothing, to no one, again. "I haven't had one of those in a while." She tries to laugh but it's lousy, shaky, _afraid._ "I think I might need the night light." 

Immediately, Amélie's weight leaves the mattress and the muted tapping of bare feet travels across the room. A click, and a feeble, bluish light goes on in the corner. Lena watches Amélie straighten up, sees the graveness of her features, the sharpness of her eyebrows, and the divinity of her chin. She tilts her head in question at Lena, and Lena realizes she had been staring for too long. Lena promptly looks away.

"Is this better?" 

"Mm, thanks," Lena mumbles, shuffling to lie back down. Amélie's foot steps travel back across the room and Lena finds herself squeaking when a weight dips on her bunk and Amélie is pulling her into her arms and against her chest. 

"And this?"

Lena actually laughs. A wet, gurgly, trembling sound. "Yes." 

Amélie holds Lena as Lena sobs and whispers calm into Lena's ears, small promises of _it'll be okay, you're okay, we're here,_  I'm _here,_ and Lena has never clung so tightly to words and promises as she does at this moment. 

Lena decides, she doesn't mind being Amélie's sort-of-sister. She doesn't mind if the other kids look at Amélie in the way she's sure she also does when Amélie isn't looking. 

As long as Amélie stays and holds her and doesn't leave her, she'll be okay. 

She cries right now because she wants to. She cries because she's safe. 

 

* * *

 

Amélie is one year to leaving when a couple from Birmingham decide to stop wandering the orphanage to watch her instead during her Thursday practice. The man is a tall one, broad-shouldered and fair skinned, blonde-haired and dark-eyed. The woman looping arms with him is dark-skinned, with small eyes that kind of... glint with delight the longer they watch Amélie go through her routine. Standing together, they look like they should be in movies, Lena thinks. 

"She's one of our oldest ones," Patty is telling them, dressed in casuals instead of her Thursday leotard. "She's one year from being released, actually." 

"Thrown out?" the Birmingham woman asks, quietly but appalled. Patty ducks her head. Lena notices she doesn't deny it. 

"It's government policy. Only kids under eighteen can stay. When they stop being, in essence,  _children,_ the government deems it fair to return them to the adult world. Even alone." 

Lena swallows and tries not to look like she's listening. Standing right next to them, it's pretty hard. 

Amélie is back to doing stretches, resting. The Birmingham woman hums. 

"She's beautiful. A truly sophisticated face, mm. Aristocratic." 

"She's an intelligent one, as well. She came to us at ten years old and could read even English at a collegiate level. Her English has long since improved. She speaks independent of books now." 

The Birmingham man quirks his brows at Patty. "Her English?" 

"She is French, sir. Came with her father from France when she was still a little one."

The Birmingham couple whisper to each other and only stop as Amélie inserts a new record to rehearse a new routine to. They're smiling, Lena sees, and she doesn't know what to feel. 

Patty sees her watching and gives her a stern look. She tilts her head in a meaningful gesture. Lena ducks her head and leaves for the backyard. 

 

"'Ey, mate." 

Lena pokes her head out from under the blanket. Patrick is standing at the door, one hand in his pocket and another rubbing his stubble. He's wearing his apron still. 

"The Birmingham gits are here," he says with distaste. He's always disliked the wealthy, posh types. "Amélie is about ready to go. Ain'cha saying good bye?" 

"We've said our good byes last night," Lena croaks.  _Said_ isn't very accurate, actually. Sobbed more like. Lena can remember a time they had cried that hard and for that long. 

They were thinking about people far, far away then, too. Too far away. 

Patrick's stare is unwavering. He glances at his nails, picking dirt off from underneath one. "She asked for you, mate. Wouldn't do to make her wait." 

Lena's eyes flick from Patrick, to the ceiling, and then to nothing. She waits for him to leave. He doesn't. He, instead, sighs very, very loudly, as if everything about this whole affair and how Lena is acting is physically  _hurting_ him, and if that's how this is for him, Lena can't put into words how it is for her. 

"Lena," he starts, and he's never called her by her name before. Not ever, and the weight of his voice makes Lena shudder and choke and shut her eyes. "It's gonna be a while before you see her again. If you even ever see her again." Lena sucks a breath through her teeth. "Wouldn't you want to see and touch and hear her as much as you can right now while you're able? You're being plenty stupid right now, mate." 

Lena doesn't speak. Patrick doesn't, too, for a while. 

"Ain'cha happy for her?" 

" _I am,_ " Lena bursts, sat up and wide-eyed, offended and  _angry_ at the thought that someone would even think she's not happy for Amélie. Amélie is getting a family. She's getting a home. She's getting all that she deserves, this sweet, kind, beautiful girl with a heart as golden as her eyes. Lena's heart flutters before it clenches. 

Patrick blinks at her. "You're just sad for yourself?" 

Lena falls quiet and glares at him like  _there's your answer, mate._

Patrick pushes off the doorway and crosses his arms over his chest. He doesn't meet her eyes. "So you ready to head down now or what?" 

He lets Lena lead the way down. Lena takes her steps slow, one at a time, feeling weights and weights like bags of sand dropping to her stomach with each stride, each flat of her feet on the surface. Patrick lets her take her time. He says nothing at all. 

All the other kids are perched at the windows, trying to get the best view they can of the hillfoot. Watching as Amélie loads up her things into her new family's car and breathe in the space of her new family's air. The door is wide open. Lena has never been more thankful of the orphanage's many, many stairs. 

Patty is already at the hillfoot, watching with folded arms. She turns to look when Lena approaches and Lena sees a faint red flush under her eyes and on her nose. Patty's trying not to cry and failing. 

Which is not to be said for Lena, because as soon as Amélie turns and sees her they both start crying. 

"Does it really have to be this early?" Lena asks like she asked last night, and the night before that, and the night before that. It's only been days since they signed the adoption papers. It's only been days since they first met Amélie and decided she was the one for them. "What they in a hurry to take you for?"

"They have business," Amélie says like she said last night, and the night before that, and the night before that. "They cannot dally. Oh,  _Lena,_ " and there, Amélie has started to laugh wetly. "I do not know how I feel." 

"You should be happy! Ecstatic, really! Don't be stupid now." 

And Amélie laughs again, palming her eyes. "Then I suppose I am." 

Lena looks around Amélie's arm and sees the Birmingham couple watching cautiously. If they fear someone could change Amélie's mind, their fears are well grounded. Lena believes she could do that. 

But she won't. 

Kindness, Amélie taught her. No place for selfishness here. 

"You'll do great, okay?" Lena murmurs, and she wishes she was taller so she could wipe Amélie's tears away properly. So they could be face to face as she does it. "They have tons of dancing studios in Birmingham, yeah?  _Loads_ of 'em." She pokes Amélie in the stomach. "You're going to dominate every single one." 

That gets another pop of wet laughter from Amélie. Amélie sniffles, charges forward and envelopes Lena in the tightest, strongest embrace Lena's ever felt. Lena tries her best to return it, but she's shaking. 

"Thank you, Lena," Amélie whispers, and Lena closes her eyes and manages her breathing. "Thank you for being my friend. The  _protector of my honor_." And they both laugh here, because although it was one fight, one from years ago that Lena didn't even win, it mattered. "You will be with me. Everywhere I go." 

Lena nods against the crook of Amélie's neck and whimpers. "You're a sap." 

And then she's being let go, dropped back to the balls of her feet, and kissed. Chaste and sweet and short and  _enough,_ more than enough, a peck to her lips that's cold and wet and  _perfect._

"We will see each other again, no?" 

And Lena knows neither of them know if that's true. If that's even possible. Amélie's smile is wobbly and Lena feels like she can't breathe, and she needs to stop, to lie down,  _drop dead,_ so she just nods her head to end it. 

Patty comes forward to palm Amélie by the shoulder and jerk her chin toward where she needs to be. Amélie nods her head and pulls Patty in, hugging her easily, taller already than the older woman. She gives Patty her thanks in whispers. 

Patrick gives Amélie a one-armed hug of his own, and wraps an arm around Lena's shoulder as he withdraws. 

Amélie looks up at the orphanage, the old house with the squeaky hinges and aging floorboards and night lights, and breathes out a laugh. 

"G'bye, love," Lena tells her finally. 

Amélie smiles. " _Adieu, chérie._ " 

Lena stands there at the hillfoot until the Birmingham couple's sleek black car disappears in the horizon. She stands there five minutes more to stare at nothing, until Patrick pulls her baggy sleeve and lets her lead them up. He asks her what she wants for supper and she shakes her head, says she won't be eating dinner. 

Patty doesn't bother her on her way up to their– _her_ room. Amélie's old sheets are still there, on the top bunk, and Lena stands stupidly in the middle of a strangely _empty_ , cramped room before deciding to turn on the night light. 

She climbs up the top bunk and lies there, staring at the ceiling. Amélie's blanket is draped around her stomach. She clutches handfuls of it. 

She cries until she has nothing to cry out anymore.


	2. a waited phone never rings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is lena-centric, but the next will have more lena/amélie. 
> 
> enjoy.

_To tell you the truth_  
_As night falls, a quelea crawls_  
_And whispers on his last wings_  
_So abundant are we, left alone I shall be_  
_But a waited phone never rings_

 _Are you a pusher or are you a puller?_  
_I pull the weight towards me_  
_And I lack the zest of a lemon, looking forward_  
_Unless I have a woman pushing me_

*** 

 

Lena knows what it means to want to be a pilot. 

It means bravery. It means determination. It means hard work, blood and sweat and tears. Most importantly, it means education and the marks to prove one's intellect can head in the right direction and  _handle_ it. 

Her dad had diplomas and certificates framed, hung when he was still alive and then gone into the trunk when he died. She remembers one time he guided her through them, tucked against his chest and her temple on his crow's feet. 

" _If you're ever gonna take to the skies, love, you gotta have the noggin for it. A dumb pilot will only get his squad and hisself killed._ " 

Lena has always known she wanted to be a pilot. Has always known she was going to  _be_ one. But the orphanage doesn't offer schooling, and she's almost  _14_ now and she doesn't know if it's her lacking height or lacking weight or unruly, kinky hair that turn foster parents off. Whatever it is, Lena hates it. Them. Herself. 

Patty comes to her one night when she doesn't show up for dinner. A scolding ready on her tongue, for sure, but Lena is sitting there on the windowsill, a strange, blank kind of look on her face, not acknowledging the person on the doorway, and the scolding doesn't come.  

"You didn't come for dinner." Not a question. Not an accusation. A statement of fact that's making Lena  _angry_ for some reason. She grips the wood of the windowsill tight, looks down at the ground. It's a long fall. 

They've moved her to the fourth floor, in a room smaller than her first one with a singular bed and a singular dresser. It had been a stock room once, she thinks, but she can't complain. Not with the alarming escalation of violence in the country and the steady influx of orphans and  _deaths._  Lena has never wanted to be a pilot more than she does now. 

But no one wants her. She tells Patty as much. 

"I'm going to grow old here," she says to the ground. She sways her legs. One slipper accidentally slides off her foot and drops noiselessly. She looks at the sky, and looking up rather than looking down is even worse. "I'm going to grow old here, and by the time I'm out there I'll be too late." 

"Too late?" 

"Can't you see it? It's the war. It's only getting worse," Lena says, a hard edge to her voice. "There are news all over about it! And we're just here, like a bunch of sitting ducks. The governments say they can handle it. But can they really?" she seethes, shaking her head. "People are dying everyday. Kids get orphaned everyday. And then here humans and omnics are too busy hating each other to actually do anything about the war–the real enemies, I mean. Bunch of stupid idiots, I say." 

"That's repetitive." Lena turns to Patty in brooding question and Patty shrugs, approaches Lena. "Stupid and idiot. _Stupid idiots_. It's repetitive." 

There's a moment of  _oh, mm, that's right_ before Lena realizes her situation and she's passionately mad again. Patty tells her _scoot_ with indifference, but Lena doesn't miss how she automatically reaches out, grasps Lena's arm, grounds her to the sill as they shift to sit together on it. 

"What'd you mean when you said you'd be too late?" 

Lena contemplates dropping her other slipper to join the first. "A lot more people would've died by then." 

"You mean to tell me you can stop those lot more people from dying?" 

"I could try." Lena rolls her jaw and sets it. She scowls at the ground. "I could protect everyone." 

"You can't protect everyone, Lena." 

Lena's brows furrow. She shakes her head. " _I could try,_ " she repeats. 

In the end, she decides to drop her other slipper. She leans down minutely to watch it go. Patty's stare warms the side of her head, wakes gooseflesh on her neck and arms. 

"You're angry," Patty decides. 

"Only out of kindness," Lena says quietly. "Someone taught me that, once. The war needs to end, some time." Patty may or may not understand that, but she still looks at Lena with an unreadable expression. She sits with Lena on the sill until Patrick checks on them, until he herds the kids to sleep himself and whistles something as he disappears back down to the lower floors. 

A zephyr rushes past and tangles their hair. Lena's spreads on her back like a wild fan. 

"We  _are_ a bunch of stupid idiots, aren't we?" Patty says much, much later on. Lena glances at her with brows raised. "But not you," she continues, and her face is pensive as she looks at Lena. "Not you. You're brave enough to be smart." 

Lena hums and looks at the sky. "I wish some of the foster parents saw that," she mumbles. Something in her chest clenches as she says this. A weight like breeze blocks drops to her belly. 

Patty pulls Lena off the windowsill with her and closes the windows. 

"One will, eventually," she says softly. 

Lena doesn't know about that. But she's young and maybe a little stupid and she _hopes_ just the same. 

 

* * *

 

Another kid is saying their goodbyes as Lena stands at the halfway step of the orphanage's hill. Patty and Patrick are down there with some other kids, too, and Lena knows even without paying attention that the kids are crying. 

She remembers saying her own goodbyes that way, once upon a time. She wonders what happened to the years. Wonders what's become of Amélie. 

Lena thinks about her. In the gaps of time where there's peace, she thinks of Amélie. When it's calm and the kids are quiet and no hinges are squeaking in the house, she thinks of Amélie and often wonders where time has taken her. Often wonders if Amélie thinks of her in the calm, too. 

Amélie sent her letters during her first year away. She told Lena about her foster parents, about their grand, old house and the grand, old room they've given her. She has no siblings, she said, because her foster mother is incapable of bearing child and her foster father won't know how to carry a baby if you gave him one. They have a good sense of humor, though, she said, and she missed Patty, she missed Patrick, she missed Lena, even missed her bullies, but her foster parents are good people and she's doing okay. 

 _I have a closet of pointe shoes and leotards. Some other clothes, too, but those two are the only ones I really care about,_ she said in her first letter.  _I have a bright yellow shirt here and I wear it to sleep because yellow things and bright things remind me of you, Lena, and I like being reminded of you._

Lena had written, rewritten, rewritten again, had Patrick check, had  _Patty_ check, and then rewritten (again) her first letter to Amélie before mailing it. It was two pages long and an embarrassing contrast to Amélie's four, but there wasn't much to say when not much has changed. 

The orphanage was still an orphanage, and the orphans were still orphans. But Amélie gushed and gushed and _gushed_ , and Lena knew she must not have doing it on purpose, but it got harder to write back the longer time passed. 

For Amélie, it was new cities and new sights and new people. For Lena, it was still the orphanage, it was still orphans. 

It was hard to not feel bitter. It was hard to not feel abandoned and stagnant. 

It was hard to not feel like her worth to Amélie had run out. 

 _We are leaving for France in two days. They've business to attend to, but they're taking me with them to see Paris. They say the city is outstanding. I've never really been outside Annecy in France,_ said Amélie's last letter.  _I don't know if they realize it, but they're bringing me home. I feel a strange mix of sadness and happiness in me, Lena. This might be my last letter for a while. I hope you're doing well._

That was three years ago. Lena still has Amélie's letters in her dresser, under all her shorts. 

The shorts at least fit her now, somewhat. Her knees show under them now and she's still small, but she's only 14. There will be plenty of time to grow taller. When she thinks of height, she thinks of Amélie. Has she gotten even taller, Lena wonders. Will they still be funny to look at together? 

Patrick pokes her between the eyes and she whines, covering her face. "Up we go now, mate, let's go. It's lunch time." 

Lena nods and reaches out on instinct. Patrick holds her hand as they climb up the stairs back to the orphanage proper. 

"You keep holding Lena's hand like that, Pat, and the kids are gonna start thinking we're playing favorites." Patty comes up from behind Lena. She's looking at her brother with a quirked brow. 

"I just don't want the kid to trip over herself and get a serious head injury, Pat, you know she's a magnet for injuries." 

"' _Course,_ sure." 

They call each other Pat, the twins. It's bizarre to watch them talk sometimes. They bicker for a while about the hand-holding thing with Lena between them and brooding. Lena doesn't know how it feels to have a brother, or a sister, or both, but this must be close to it. 

"We have another guest coming over after lunch," Patty says when they're done arguing. 

Patrick hums. "We've been getting lots of guests, haven't we? Lots of foster parents coming and going. S'a good thing, I suppose."

"It always is." 

Lena knows Patty is looking at her, but she keeps her eyes forward. 

 

The guest arrives at around two and her face next to Patty's and Patrick's shocks Lena so much that she forgets her manners for all of ten seconds. When she recovers, she bumbles a greeting with the other younger kids and the old woman's eyes narrow, if only a little. Now Lena knows where Patty got her glares from. 

"How was your trip, mum?" Patrick asks as he hugs the old woman–his mum, Lena reminds herself–and rubs her back. Patty kisses their mother on the cheek in turn. 

"Oh, it was fine. My feet are killing me, though. Honestly, those stairs are why I never visit you two." 

"Aw." 

"Well now that's just selfish." 

"I gave birth to your sister and you after, Patrick, can't get any more selfless than that, I believe." 

Patrick flushes. Lena and Patty are the only two that laugh and at that, the old woman's eyes seem to shine at Lena. Something in Lena's belly catches embers. 

 

Patrice–Lena is definitely seeing a funny pattern here now–goes through the standard procedure of an orphanage visitation. Patty guides her around the house, lets her linger and look around, answers questions about the children Patrice asks about. She's a quiet, no nonsense kind of person, like Patty, like Patrick. 

"You teach them to dance?" 

"Only on Tuesdays and Thursdays," Patty says as they watch several children practice on their own without her. "To keep them busy. Wouldn't want them to be idle and wandering." 

Lena, whose old, old habits have yet to die, still watching twice a week in the rec room, doesn't notice right away that Patrice is looking at her. She shifts, eagerly at attention with raised brows. 

"Don't _you_ dance?" 

Lena shrugs. "Not  _that_ kind of dancing, no. I can swing with you, though." 

Patrice hums and Lena thinks that's a chuckle she blows through her nostrils. "And to what do you want give your time to?" 

"Lena wants to be a pilot for the RAF," Patty answers for her. Lena shuts her mouth with a pout, but something like pleasure runs down her spine at the tone of pride in Patty's voice. "She wants to keep people safe from high up in the skies." 

"But?" 

Patty frowns. "But we don't have a school here. A pilot career needs good education, mum." 

Patrice looks at Lena again and her expression is thoughtful. "Why want to become a pilot, Lena? Do you know the odds of a pilot's survival, especially in the RAF? Especially at war?" 

Patty snatches Patrice's elbow and whispers something like  _mother_ sharply but Lena's chin juts out in defiance, and when she stares at Patrice, it's with fire. 

"I do. Pilots go down like flies everyday. Planes catch fire at war. Soldiers die," she says. Like her father, she almost says. "But if I'm going to be one of the pilots that die, I could at least use the time I'm  _not dead_ to protect people. If I would die–and we all do, ma'am–I want to at least go after having done something _worthwhile_." 

Patrice's face doesn't quite change, even in the face of a vague accusation. Patty has taken to watching the children practicing in the rec room with a strained expression. Lena doesn't realize her hands are shaking until Patrice takes one of them, smooths the pad of her thumb on top until Lena relaxes. Lena ducks her head in apology at the outburst. 

"You know, the world could always use more heroes," Patrice murmurs. "Very good, love." 

That night, Patty lets Lena stay up with them to have tea in the common room. The TV is tuned to some late night drama Lena doesn't really find interesting. Patrice, however, finds it very intriguing.

"So what's your dad's name?" Lena asks Patty and Patrick. 

"Joe," the three of them answer in unison. Lena nearly spills her tea from laughing too hard. 

 

* * *

 

Patrice Oxton lives in an apartment in a fairly peaceful street in Westminster. It's not huge but it's not tiny either, and there are two rooms and high ceilings, and brick and plaster walls that hold traces of many, many memories from many, many years ago. 

It's so easy to imagine Patty and Patrick running around this apartment as laughing, wee things, their hair brown rather than gray. "You can take the twins' old room," Patrice tells Lena with a tired grunt. They're on the fifth level and the elevator is out of order. Patrice doesn't have the stair training Lena has under her belt. "Bed's a bunk, though, so just pick which you want and use the other for things you don't want in the dressers." 

Lena hoists her suitcases into the room with too much wonder and adrenaline in her body to mind the difficulty. A flick of the switch and she's greeted with cream walls and modest furniture. She looks out the window, sees neighboring establishments and the sky, gray and empty. 

Oh, the sky. The sky looks so different in Westminster. She's reminded vaguely of King's Row and its starless nights. 

Patrice sees her like that almost half an hour later. Suitcases wrenched open on the floor, dresser drawers opened and only half filled, Lena sitting on the desk pushed up against the one window in the room. Patrice nudges Lena with her elbow and hands her a cup of tea. She sits on the tabletop herself. 

"Different from the countryside, innit?" 

Lena nods, blowing lightly on her tea. "Even the sky looks like it feels crowded." Patrice chuckles. "It was like this in King's Row, too." 

Patrice hums. They sip in silence. Across them a window opens and a teenage boy starts to shake dust off a mat, head angled away. 

"Did you adopt me because Patty and Patrick told you to?" Lena asks quietly when the boy retreats back into his window and closes it. "I know they felt sorry for me. Especially Patty. I didn't impress most the foster parents who came to visit. Think I annoyed them, actually. I don't know what it is about me that always turned them off but you _have_ to tell me if they made you do it–" 

"I came to visit because those two knuckleheads told me to," Patrice cuts off smoothly. It doesn't have a sizzle that would've otherwise made Lena feel bad. "I adopted you because I wanted to." 

"Why, though?" 

Patrice looks at Lena over the rim of her teacup. Lena stares at her face, tries etching each wrinkle to memory, the sag of her cheeks and the shocking white of her pinned up hair. She hears Patrice hum. "Because you couldn't be a pilot in there, Lena. You wouldn't become a hero just stuck in there." 

She watches Patrice get off the desk and strut across the room. Patrice stops at the doorway just to say, "and Patricia and Patrick don't pity you. They admire you. Like you. _Love_ you. Would've scolded them for having favorites if I didn't right away see why. 

"Now finish up there, will you? Put your things away and find a place for those suitcases. I'm gonna start with supper. Patrick tells me fish and chips are your favorite?" Lena nods. "How _horribly_ British of you." 

Patrice closes the door as she goes. Lena finishes her tea shortly after. She takes her time with tidying her things. Takes her time with fixing up the place. She feels herself smile. 

 

Patrice later tells Lena about one Patricia Oxton and one Patrick Oxton. The former is a Psychology graduate and a Master's degree holder of the same from King's College, consistent in honor rolls from youth to her adulthood. The latter left London Business School with an award for Most Outstanding Undergraduate Research, was a hundred-meter sprinter all through his entire schooling years, and excelled in most everything he put his mind to except cards. Lena gawks at the display of their awards, medals, and certificates in the living room, getting surer and surer by the minute that she met  _completely_ different people at the orphanage. 

"Wowie," she breathes, stepping back to look at everything in one view. The twins' college yearbook pictures smile winning smiles at her from somewhere in the middle of all the other framed honors. " _That's_ Patrick?"  

"Mm. I tell him to shave whenever I can. He looks so much better off without the stubble, don'cha think?" 

"Oh yeah," Lena says, still in awe. "He looks smart as hell without the beard, he does." 

"Looks dimwitted with the beard, doesn't he? Why he won't believe his own mother is beyond me." 

Lena laughs and Patrice just smiles, her laughter brief and quiet, out through her nostrils again. 

Lena gets up on the tips of her toes to read one award with Patty's name on it. "Why are they at the orphanage, then? Bloody hell, with all these they could be working somewhere real fancy and just be living the _life_." 

Patrice goes quiet. Lena is terrified for about ten heartbeats that she said the wrong thing, worded it wrong, toned it wrong, but the apology on her tongue dies stillborn when Patrice suddenly sighs, the sound of it like surrender. 

"The war made things hard for everyone," Patrice starts. "It's hard to hold down a job when you got air raid sirens and bombings going on left and right, y'know? You have to move, leave your home because the attacks are too close for comfort, and then you have to switch jobs, and get settled, and do it all again when the explosions start getting close... 

"I just came back here again two years ago, hon," she says quietly. "Patty and Patrick were comfortable in the orphanage, by then. I didn't want to get them moving again after they've settled. I unpacked everything myself and put everything where they're supposed to be." 

Patrice notices a tipped frame–it's a picture of the twins in gowns and togas–and steps forward to straighten it with a hum. 

"I'm sorry," is all Lena could think of to say. 

"That's why they're fond of you. Your dreams–they're good dreams. Dreams that help other dreams," she murmurs. Lena smiles, and Patrice's mouth stretches to match. "That's why you work hard, alright, because we're counting on you." 

 

Lena writes a letter to Amélie that night. To the address she knows, the one in Birmingham. She writes,  _I have a family now. It's a good one. It's Patty's and Patrick's. Their mum adopted me a month after her visit and I'm with her now, here in London. I got their old room._

_Ms. Oxton is going to send me to school. She got me modules to study, for tests I have to take to see if I qualify for acceleration to high school, she said. I'm excited. And a little scared. Maybe plenty scared, but you'll keep that a secret, won't you?_

_I've taken their name, you know. They asked me if I wanted to keep mine but I told them it's fine. What's the use of getting adopted if you don't go all the way to be a part of the family, right? And besides, I want the only Sqn. Ldr. with my dad's name I know to be my dad. There'll be only one with that name in this age, for as long as I can help it._

_You haven't written in a while, Amélie. I miss you. I miss you all the time and I wonder how tall you've gotten. How are you?_

Lena tucks the letter into an envelope, sticks a stamp on the corner, signs the thing just so and goes to sleep that night. In the morning, she tears the letter open, erases the last part, and just leaves the  _how are you_ line. She puts it in a new envelope and sticks a new stamp. 

It gets sent back to their apartment weeks later, stamped with an angry red  _RETURN TO SENDER._

 

* * *

 

The sky is different when you're up in it, surrounded by it, gliding in it. Wide gets wider, and you realize the clouds aren't as far away as they seem. Even the imagination of flying and actual activity of flying are vastly different. With the wonder through imagining it, there's the tension when you're actually doing it. The attention one has to give to the controls, to the altimeter, to the HUD and pedals and steers that could either mean life or death.   
  
War. War is also different when you're in there, caught smack dab in the middle of it, helmet and goggles and the collar of your suit drenched with sweat and the linings of your respirator damp with moist and harsh, warm breaths.   
  
Lena was built to fly. Only the vastness of the sky can handle her energy and flame, never contained.  
  
War is a different thing entirely.

They tell you at training school how intense and frightening it is when you're up there. The holovids show how dangerous it is, how the slaughter happens in explosions and crushed metal rather than blood and guns and knives. 

Nothing could prepare one for war regardless. 

Lena is screaming into the comms and a cacophony of other voices scream with her, pilots lost in the faux cloud of steams and explosions in the sky over Cyprus. 

The horizon is lit with the furious lights of an omnic warship hovering above Nicosia. Shapes fall from its underside and Lena knows even without looking closer that they're vessels carrying armed hostiles to siege the city proper. But they're not her problem–and a part of her _hates_ that they're not her problem–those are up to the ground units. Her responsibility is up here. 

She mows down an omnic fighter and very barely manages to veer away when the one immediately behind it fires back. The force of the maneuver strains her chest and something that feels like a punch to the gut makes her gasp into her respirator. The glow of plasma and an explosion lights up to her left. 

 _"Got'cha,"_ someone huffs into the comms and Lena can't help the breathless laugh that comes out of her. " _Careful there,_ _sweetheart._ "

 _"I had that,"_ she says back. The answer she gets is an exasperated  _yeah, right_ and she makes a mental note to buy Richards a drink later. " _Second time_ _now,_ "she adds as an afterthought, and the gratitude in her voice is returned with a gleeful laugh. 

She gets above Richards' fighter and the both of them lay waste to more hostiles coming up. Richards yells out scores and Lena laughs her terror away with him. That's how they've always managed, the lot of them. Laugh it out. Don't mind the fear. 

Fear will only kill you here. 

Richards was the first friend Lena ever made at the British air force base in Cyprus. Two years older than Lena's 19 at the time, on his first tour as well with a youthful face and a buzzcut of curly blonde hair. He had sat with her at dinner, opened with, "evenin', lass, you're looking awfully lonely," and she had tried to dismiss him with, "I don't swing that way, mate, not the way you're thinking." 

Richards only grinned and told her, "eh, me, too." 

He's a flamboyant kind of lad, Richards. He swaggers more than walks and it looks good on him, with his broad shoulders and height above six feet. He'll chat with you in high volumes in the mess hall regardless of the annoyed eyes in his direction. When he laughs, his small eyes get smaller, and the dimples on either side of his mouth deepen like craters, catching shadows. It's easy to talk to him, Richards. Easier to love him, even. 

Especially after he decked a cadet in the jaw one day after calling the both him and Lena traitors to humanity when they defended the citizen omnic population. He got disciplinary action, but he was smiling all the while. 

He understands things, Richards. He looks beyond what the world shows. He's kind.

He'd told her once that he grew up in Aberdeen, in some small, quiet town where there were as much blue and green as there was concrete. His mother was a teacher at the local elementary school and his father ran a pub where, Richards recounted in graphic, _graphic_ detail, he was allowed his first drink and subsequently got drunk, got brave, and ended up in bed with four other men, two of which were twice his senior. 

While being quite fine with all of it, his father wasn't too pleased with being given the details. Lena shared that with his father. Richards had laughed, but Lena didn't miss how his eyes went out of focus and his smile dimmed until he looked lost and far away. 

"They went for Aberdeen. Retaliation for the UK's attack on the omnium foothold in Mumbai," he said. "My town was a casualty. That's exactly how they worded it, too. Casualty." 

They drank that night. And have continued to drink for the next nights when there are news of another casualty. 

Lena's comm crackles, someone reporting friendlies coming up from the rear and she steers away, shoots down hostiles she can see coming up at them. Their backup stays behind, a fleet of bombers that check in and request cover from the remaining fighters. Lena's wing shows its assent by heading straight for the enemy warship.

More fighter units come into view until she loses which is Richards' and she settles with a quiet prayer said under her breath. " _Fighter units engage, get our bombers as close as possible to that warship,_ " comes the command through the comms and they charge. 

Aircraft drop like flies. Lena doesn't want to look at them close enough, see whether they're friend or foe. 

Sweat pools at the collar of her suit and gathers at her temples and under her eyes. She shoots down one, two hostile fighters and punctures the tail of another. She banks, hard, when an omnic aircraft rams itself in her direction. She's almost thrown right out of her seat. Straps snap her back in place. 

The second one is luckier. Lena screams as she veers away carelessly and her fighter shakes, the sound of metal scraping and snapping off not at all unfamiliar. The cockpit fills with red light and the comms burst with static before cutting off. She thinks she hears Richards' shout before her comms die. 

Heat fills the space of the cockpit and Lena is gasping into her respirator, hands frantically working to steady the fighter, let her down easy, not crash and  _not kill her._ She twists the knob of the emergency landing handle and pulls. The fighter trembles and a metallic whine sounds from her left, her right, all around her. Lena pulls the steers with a strangled shout. She stomps on the pedals like a maniac, a prayer in her throat and curses rolling out of her tongue. The windscreen is bottomlit by the lights of a flaming nose. The altimeter is ticking left and right, out of control. 

This is how it felt like. _This is how it felt like_ , something screams at the back of her head, this is how it felt like when her father was shot down. 

Her pulse rings in her ears. The fighter is going down, down,  _down_ in a sharp arc and Lena shuts her eyes, shouts epithets as she pulls the steers with all her strength, feet stomping on the pedals with so much force her thighs and knees shake. 

The fighter whines, a begging, unholy kind of sound of metal scratching metal. Its nose tips upward, and then it crashes flat on its bottom on a lane of parking lots. Lena feels the crater form beneath her. 

She opens the hood of the cockpit and tears her respirator and helmet off, gasping for air, tears running down her cheeks, eyes wet of their own volition. In front of her, the flames on the nose of the fighter fade into smoke. 

She fades with the fire. 

 

When she comes to, she's looking at the sky, gray and clear and that's the sun starting to crawl up from one corner. Someone is wiggling her and there are voices, many of them, speaking in English and other languages. Her head spins and her mouth fills with bile. 

She forces herself off the gurney and vomits off the railing. The jostling stops and she feels the lump on her back–her parachute, she realizes–disappear before she's pushed to lie down. 

" _One more over here, a–a pilot?_ " 

" _Did you say pilot?_ " 

Lena groans, tries sitting up but hands force her back down again. " _Stay down,_ " she hears, a woman's voice with a heavy accent, and then a murmur in another language–German? " _Oxton? Ms. Oxton? Is that your name?_ " The part of her suit where her name is emblazoned is tugged. " _Can you hear me?_ " 

"Lena Oxton. Ms. Oxton is my ma," Lena slurs, the sleeve of her suit hiked up and ripped. A needle rests just below her elbow. She twitches when it goes in. "Wh–where's the rest of my wing? Richards? Do you have a Richards in there–"

" _Please stop trying to get up, Lena_ _,_ " the voice cuts off and there is as much authority in it as there is sadness. Lena's stomach feels hollow, cold, like a great, big hole. " _Medical treatment is underway. You seem to have hit your head hard when you landed. You need to be treated for concussions. To the air force base, with this one._ " The last part is said to someone else. 

Lena sways with the motions of the gurney, of being loaded into a vehicle, and the voices around her get cloudier and cloudier until she slips away again. 

 

Lena is the only pilot in action to survive that battle. Their entire bomber fleet was decimated by the omnics, and had it not been for the remnants of Lena's wing going kamikaze and damaging the omnic warship to the point of retreat, Nicosia would be rubble by now. 

They kept her in medical for days. Because of her head and vomiting, they said, but she knows it was mostly because they were figuring out what to do with her. 

Spy, she thought she heard once. Omnic sympathizer, omnium apologist, _coward._ In the end, they accepted her story as plausible and even gave her a promotion. Getting off a hit aircraft relatively unscathed is no ordinary feat. It hurt, though, walking the base halls with wary eyes on her. It hurt even more to see what was left of their numbers. 

Giving Richards and the plenty other fallen pilots their sendoff hurt. Knowing there won't be a Plt Off Greg Richards waiting for her in the mess hall with a cheeky grin hurt. 

Everything about war hurt. 

Sometimes, Lena wishes she went down with the rest of them. Sometimes she wishes it was just her instead of them. Instead of Richards. 

She drinks herself to sleep for many, many nights. One drink for each casualty. One for all like Richards who died on the ground and in the sky. 

 

* * *

 

Paphos falls. 

The British armies in Cyprus are spread thin and the Cypriot National Guard are restless, reckless, and afraid. They both have just started to recover from Nicosia and if the attack on Nicosia was already heavy, the Paphos siege is the weight of a mountain ripped off the ground and thrown right at them. 

Lena is one of the last fighter pilots to be sent into the battlefield. Helmet under one arm and in full flight suit, she waits as her fighter gets wheeled up. 

Except, it doesn't, not even nearly an hour later, and then she's being approached by her group captain with a grave expression. 

"Sir?" she ventures. She pulls her helmet to her chest protectively, looking past him to see if her fighter is on its way. It still isn't. 

"Flt Lt Oxton," he greets. Lena salutes automatically. His brow seems to twitch. "We need you in the conference room." 

Lena's face scrunches. "Si–sir, I don't think now is the time, I need my fighter–"

"Oxton–" 

"Our girls and boys are about ready to breathe their last out there and the Cypriot–" 

"Oxton, please–" 

"I mean, we need all the soldiers we need out there, I can't just leave them and–" 

" _Conference room!_ That's an  _order,_ flight lieutenant," the group captain bellows, and Lena flinches, almost drops her helmet. "I don't want to go repeating myself. Go. No need to change. Now." 

Lena does. She salutes, but with a scowl and a shake of her head. She tosses her helmet angrily to the side as she leaves. 

 

The British air marshal is in the room with the Cypriot military commander, the two of them two different shades of brown next to each other, caramel and darker. Lena automatically snaps to attention when they stand at her entrance, but the others in the room remain seated. 

That's a gorilla to the side of the Cypriot military commander. In heavy armor and glasses, typing away on the device pulled up close to his face. Behind him is a man with blonde hair and a dour face. He looks Lena up and down before turning his attention back to the device. 

Cmdr Jack Morrison and Chief Engineer and Head of Research and Development Winston, both from the UN liaison and defense forces, the international organization otherwise known as Overwatch. Something lodges itself in Lena's throat and she clears it, inadvertently getting the attention of both Cmdr Morrison and Winston. They all stare at one another, like idiots, until a cough from one corner of the room snaps them out of it. 

"Jack, I thought you said not to dally." Lena turns to see a tall, blonde woman approaching with a cup of coffee in her hands. She smiles at Lena, who receives the cup like a dolt, too shocked to say even _thank you._ "It's nice to see you again, Flt Lt Oxton, well and on your feet, this time." 

Lena's brows furrow. "I..." 

"We met, in Nicosia. It was Overwatch field sweepers who found you, and I who vouched for your integrity and promotion." Lena closes her mouth. _Coward_ and  _traitor_ echoes in the back of her mind, a time not long ago in the base corridors. "Angela Ziegler, Head Doctor and Battlefield Support for Overwatch." 

Dr Ziegler offers a hand and Lena is back in her wits enough to take it, shaking it mildly. 

"Lena," the air marshal says, and Lena is surprised by his choice of address. "The air force has another promotion in store for you. If you'd take a seat." 

"Promotion?" Lena doesn't sit. 

" _Lena Oxton_ ," Winston starts. Lena can't help but flinch at the volume of his voice, the depth and borderline growl that could only belong to an animal. "Orphaned at eight years old, adopted at fifteen, accelerated to high school and graduated with top marks." Lena glances down. Cmdr Morrison stares blankly at her. "Left training school with high regards from instructors and a Flying Officer immediately upon being drafted into the RAF. 

"Cyprus tour, first tour, assigned two and a half years ago, has been in every defense thus far..." Winston hums, reads through the other contents displayed on his device under his breath. " _Ah_ , here. Pilot on the field in the defense of Nicosia. Entire wing was wiped out except for you." 

"Can you tell us how you did that?" Cmdr Morrison speaks for the first time. His voice is as serious as his face. "How you survived?" 

Lena frowns, looks at the air marshal, the Cypriot commander, and then Dr Ziegler, who tries out a smile. Is this her trial come too late? Are they going to put her down for treason for good? Something cold wells up in her stomach. 

"Well?" Cmdr Morrison prompts impatiently. 

"I landed my fighter," she answers, swallowing. Were it not for the coffee in her hands, she'd be clenching her fists. "I was grazed by an omnic aircraft. Fighter's wing was hit. Engine compromised." 

"You _landed_ it?" Cmdr Morrison repeats, and Lena nods quietly. "How?" 

Lena shrugs, sighs. "I'm a pilot, sir, that's what I do. Fly and land things." 

In hindsight, the joke is inappropriate and said in the worst possible scenario, with two officers in the room and three representatives from Overwatch. But Dr Ziegler is the first to chuckle, and all of them follow suit. The British air marshal tells Cmdr Morrison something under his breath. Cmdr Morrison smirks and huffs. Lena reddens. She shuffles her feet and stares stupidly at the cup of coffee in her hands. 

"You fly and land things," Cmdr Morrison repeats, and Lena likes this better. When his voice is lighter and betraying the presence of a smile. "How would you like to fly and land the first aircraft that could travel through time, then, flight lieutenant?" 

Lena looks up, blinks, glances around like maybe they're bullshitting her– _just joking, love, you're getting dishonorably discharged_ –but they seem dead serious. "Pardon? Travel through... _what?_ " 

"Slipstream," Winston says with pride. "It's called the _Slipstream_ , Lena." 

 

Months pass. 

Months pass way too slowly, way too torturously, months of news of a continuing war and battles and  _heroes,_ at least. Heroes from the organization called Overwatch, the UN-sanctioned international task force meant to assist with the defense against omnic attacks. 

For the first time in a long, long time, it actually looks like they have a chance. Maybe they could win. 

Maybe isn't enough. 

"Winston."

"Lena," Winston answers with a grumble from behind his work desk. His lab is dark, vaguely lit by the lights and colors of his monitors. "Good morning." 

" _Good morning, Flt Lt Oxton._ " 

"Just call me Lena, Athena love, I've been here a while. I like to consider us friends." 

" _I consider us friends as well, flight lieutenant, but Winston insists I keep a strictly professional relationship with our operatives._ " 

"Bollocks, I say." 

" _As do I._ " 

"It's not like you're gonna give me unrestricted internet access whenever I sweet talk you anyway, yeah? All the movies I wanna watch, all the porn I could kno–" 

"Too far," Winston murmurs with a grimace. Lena laughs and Athena makes a sound that could almost pass off as a chuckle. Technology in this day and age, truly. "What do you need?" 

"Besides the unrestricted internet access?" Lena wheedles, resting her elbows on the edge of Winston's work desk. Winston huffs an exasperated laugh. "I'm joking, love. _Half-joking_ –but anyway..." 

Lena straightens up to look critically at the screens of Winston's monitors. She sees diagrams of an aircraft, a render of a tunnel, the path from one time to another. A model of a flight suit, blueprints of wing parts and tail parts and a cockpit... 

"It's not ready," Winston says with a sigh, as he's always said every time Lena's marched up to his office for a status update. He removes his glasses and his gaze is almost apologetic. "Every part of this project must be perfect. Too much is going into this for it to turn out a failure. And you–we have to make sure it's smooth for you." 

"I can handle not smooth, love, what am I, a kid?" 

Winston's face scrunches and Lena purses her lips, sighing. "Put me into something else, then. Make me useful. I can't stand just..." 

"I know, Lena, I know." Winston puts his glasses back on and focuses on his work again. "We all can't stand not accomplishing anything." 

Lena takes that as her cue to leave. She sighs, pushes herself off Winston's tabletop dramatically and starts to leave. "Angela wants you in the medbay, though," Winston calls out as an afterthought. 

"What for?" 

Winston shrugs. Lena blows a raspberry and struts out. 

 

"I'm perfectly healthy, Ange." 

Angela picks up her stick–the caduceus, she's always insisted, but Lena likes _stick_ better–and raises it threateningly with a straight face. Lena sits back down on the examination table. 

"That's up to me to assess, Lena. Now, open up." 

Lena opens her mouth and Angela comes closer with her flashlight. She pokes and prods a gloved finger against Lena's tongue, her cheeks, and then moves to check on Lena's eyes. 

"Have you been talking to your mother?" 

"Patrice? Mm, yeah, reminds me whenever I call to keep my hair short. She's doing alright in Westminster. I miss her, really I do." 

"And your siblings? The, ah, twins?" 

"Patrick still wants a signed picture of you, a meet-and-greet, and hopefully a date–" 

"Moving forward." Angela clears her throat as she picks up her clipboard and scans it. "How are  _you?_ "

"I thought that was up to you to assess, Ange?" and when Angela starts to move toward the caduceus, " _I meant_ , fine. I suppose, anyway. A bit restless maybe. Frustrated. Impatient." 

Angela picks up a reflex hammer. Lena scoots until her feet dangle properly off the examination table. "And the source of these... restlessness? Frustrations? Impatience?" 

Lena's foot kicks when Angela hits her knee. "The Slipstream." 

Angela pauses and when she's in motion again, she simply hums her understanding. She moves to checking Lena's blood pressure. 

"And how are your dreams?" 

Lena looks at Angela and finds Angela looking at her intently. She reminds Lena of a certain pair of twins, a certain mother who have that same kind of look on their faces no matter the time of the day. And the way she smiles so kindly reminds Lena of... someone else entirely. Lena feels her throat tighten. 

"Oh, I have them. Dreams. Often." Angela makes a sound which essentially means, elaborate. "I... it's always the same. Richards. My Cyprus wing. Nicosia. Ange love, do you think if it was Richards who survived and not me, it'd be him you lot have here?" 

Lena clenches and unclenches her fist when the pressure pack comes off. Angela jots down on her clipboard. "It takes doing something extraordinary to be in Overwatch, Lena," she murmurs. "It takes _being_ extraordinary. If it had been someone else who did what you did, then yes, probably. But that's not the case, is it?" 

"Sometimes I wish it was." 

Angela pauses to glance at Lena with an unreadable expression. Lena thinks she frowns too, she isn't sure, but Angela is turning away before she could look harder. "We all have a weight we carry." 

Lena hums, looking at her knees. "How do you manage it?" 

"I think of what I can do instead of what I should've done. And what else can happen instead of what should've happened." 

"Then can't I be elsewhere while it isn't ready? Put me somewhere useful? Throw me in a fighter, I could help you guys in the field, y'know." 

Angela purses her lips and Lena notices she's avoiding looking at her now. "That's not how things work here, Lena. We are given our tasks and we do them. You were given yours. It's what you need to do." She picks up two plastic containers and dumps them onto Lena's lap. "If things aren't ready for your task yet, you wait." 

Lena frowns, looks down at the containers, and then sighs. "Do I _really_ still have to do this? It's not like you don't already feed me shitloads of fruit and healthy garbage to not know what I'll be shitting out– _oi,_  alright, _alright,_ put the stick down.  _Jesus_." 

 

It's a few more months before it's ready. 

Angela walks with Lena to the flight compound and they're flanked by another medic and a cadet. She's reading aloud the results of Lena's medical checkup, and Lena knows she's only doing it because she's nervous. Angela doesn't flinch when faced with injury but that doesn't mean she isn't as afraid of it as the next person. 

"You've been regulating your sugar intake," she murmurs. Lena nods. 

"You told me to." 

Angela's mouth twitches. Lena grins for the both of them. 

Cmdr Morrison is in the flight compound when Angela and Lena get there. With him is Winston, doing diagnostic checks and barking at a few crew members on duty. There are also several other men in audience, a few of which Lena recognizes from the news as country ambassadors to the UN. 

Lena doesn't mind them beyond a quick salute and a cheeky grin. Once she's close enough, the crew approaches to attend to her and Cmdr Morrison nods to her, smiling, a light in his eyes. 

She salutes to him, just for common courtesy. And then she salutes Angela, and Winston, who grins and pats her shoulder. 

"Here we go, Lena," he says. Lena notices he sounds breathless. "This is it. You will _officially_ be the first pilot to fly through time. Through you, we might just be able to change the course of this war." 

And Lena's chest swells, grin stretching to match Winston's. "Won't let you down, love."

She puts on her helmet and is assisted aboard by the crew. When the hood closes over her head and the cockpit lights up in golden and yellow lights, her breath catches on the respirator. She grips the steers tight to keep from shaking. Her audience has been moved to the observation deck three floors high, wary behind glass and steel. 

She looks up at Winston through the windscreen. She nods. 

Winston gives the signal. Lena takes off. 

 

* * *

 

Lena drifts. 

She's lost in

voices

sensations

_memories_

she feels her body push and pull, jerk in and out 

disappear and reappear

torn and put back together

 _here and_ **gone again**

she's looking at her mother with a mouth full of foam trying to shake her awake 

 _mum wake_ **up, it's time for _school_**  

school time for

_for time school_

**_daddy's not coming back_  **daddy's not coming back

 _mum and dad are in a better_ **place now**

she's going up stairs and feels fresh air and fresh fear and

_**good girl, brave** girl _

_what's_ your name

Lena,  _ma'am_

_you have a roommate but I don't know where she's gone_

_roommate but I don't know_

**roommate but I don't _know_**

**_roommateroommateroommate_ **

stop

focus

breathe

_you have a roommate but_

hinges squeaking, doors  _closing, night lights_ **glowing**

_I was trying to prevent the sniffles_

_snifflessnifflessniffles_

**whocaresaboutthefuckingsnifflesfuckingsniffles**

_someone punches her face and wow that's blood,_ that's a lot of blood, that's  ** _too much fucking blood, mate_**

**that's not what happened**

_weak weak weak short short short **thin thin thin**_ couldn't win, that's what happened

oh, right

breathe, breathing, breathe,  _breathing_

 _she sees Amélie changing_ **into her leotard through** _the gap of the_ door and runs away because

_because what_

**_screaming_  **

**the kids make** _fun of her for liking_ girls and she thinks

they tell the foster parents

**do they tell the foster parents**

_**why won't anyone just fucking take her**  _why does everyone fucking  _leave_

help me

helpmehelpme _helpmehelpme_

 **where am I**   _help me_

 ** _you're at war_** and you're dying

no

nononono _nono_ **no**

 _Patrice will be so_ **fuckingproudofher** _l_ _i_ _ttlehero_

 **_just like hubby Joe Oxton_ ** **who died on the fucking field with his gun still in his hands**

 _Patrice is crying_ as Lena is sent off  _to tour_

 _be safe,_ love,  **be safe**

 _don'tfuckingdiedon'tfuckingdiedon'tfucking_ die **don'tfuckingdiedon'tfuckingdie**

 _she sees_ Richards laughing and laughing and laughing and then he's

**screaming**

_**HELPMEHELPMEHELPMEHELPMEHELPMEHELPMEHELPMEHELPME** _

Winston, help me

entire bomber fleet decimated  _fighter units gone_ kamikaze

_everyone's fucking dead, mate_

**breathe**

**breathebreathe** _breathe_

_focus_

she sees herself  _passed out on her quarters and_ **bottles of alcohol around** _her_

drink to the casualties drink to the  **fucking casualties**

_careful there, sweetheart_

_you will be with me, everywhere I go_

you will be with me, everywhere I go

**you will be with me, _everywhere I go_**

she's being pulled apart and collapsing at the seams and Winston is there, yelling, and she reaches out desperately

pulled back

_pulled back where_

_pulledbackeverywhere_

_Ange_

help me, anyone, help me

_PatricePattyPatrick_

_Winston_

Cmdr. Morrison

**Amélie**

_**should've died, fucking traitor to humanity, fucking coward, you're no fucking hero,**  _ **f** **u** **ck you**

her head is pounding and pounding and it feels like it's being split  _open like a walnut_

_Lena, can you hear me_

_Lena_

**_Lena_ **

" _Can you hear me, Lena?_ "

 

* * *

 

She doesn't cry. 

She doesn't cry because she's  _Tracer,_ Tracer the Overwatch agent, Tracer the hero, and heroes don't cry. 

Tracer doesn't cry when she's given the notice that Ms Patrice Marie Oxton passed away five months after her disappearance. She was gone for a year and a half at most, they said. Patty and Patrick have sent her letters for when she's resurfaced. She hasn't opened them. 

She doesn't cry even when Winston does, stammering out apologies and wrecking no less than five shield generator prototypes in his lab. Not when Angela and Cmdr Morrison come to restrain him, calm him down, unable to look Tracer in the eyes themselves. A miscalculation, they said. Or some kind of mistake on the construction of the plane, an oversight on the science of it, threw her off course, _ripped her body atom by atom, lost in time, not dead, not alive, not in the present,_ just _gone_ like a ghost, past and present and future colliding or just... 

_Just._

She doesn't cry when they tell her she'll never fly again. She'll never pilot a plane again. They've given her guns, though. Pulse pistols of Winston's design and a field in the Gibraltar watchpoint to train, make herself useful, to _have_ these instead. 

The first recall shocked her to the point of vomiting her entire lunch. The second completely knocked her out. 

Winston makes adjustments and Tracer finds doing recalls are easier, after. Her muscles still strain and tighten, her heartbeat still catches, her blood still reverses itself under her skin, but they're bearable. She recalls and recalls and recalls, all successfully. More importantly she's anchored by the accelerator. Here. Living. One body, one reality, one time, flowing and flowing, never splintering. 

Cmdr Morrison supervises her training whenever he's around. She annoys him, she thinks, with her erratic movements and jovial laughter and reckless shooting. To be fair, she wasn't taught these things. She's air force. Or, was air force. 

She tries not to think about that. 

Angela still calls her in for checkups. Winston does now, too. Maintenance on the chronal accelerator, he said. Make sure she doesn't disappear again. She doesn't want to disappear again. 

 

Some time into her training, Gibraltar watchpoint gets the report that a government-sanctioned foster home in the London countryside was attacked. Tracer's heart leaps to her throat and she makes for the training compound without looking back. 

Cmdr Morrison gives her his condolences after dinner. An entire orphanage, ransacked by gangs. The children were kidnapped. The two caretakers were murdered. A response team has been sent to assist the police, he said. 

Tracer doesn't make a decent shot on any of her shooting targets for the next five days. She has nightmares of faces and deaths and someone with her voice yelling  _some fucking hero you are, mate,_ and she always wakes up sweating, shaking, mouth open in a scream that won't come out. Her tears don't fall. 

 

Tracer finally gets an assignment much, much later. King's Row, under attack by hostile omnics. A simple enough mission that involves assisting the military already in action and literally shooting down all hostiles on sight until secure. Angela comes with her, no longer Angela though, with her armor and grave face, and another operative she catches the name of as McCree. 

" _Heard you do cool tricks,_ " McCree says through the comms amidst gunfire. " _Would be real nice to get to see 'em some time!_ " 

"Nice to meet you too, McCree," Tracer shouts through the explosion of an enemy grenade. McCree laughs and she guffaws in return. Mercy's voice pushes them back to focus. 

" _Concentrate_." 

Tracer shoots down one, two, three omnics and blinks away to reload. "How's he doing?" she asks idly as she ducks down behind a dilapidated steel barrier, looking at the wounded soldier held down by his comrades nearby. 

"Not good," says one. "He's bleeding out real quickly." 

"Mercy?" 

" _I h_ _eard. On my way._ " 

Tracer flinches away from the edge of the barrier when the omnics on the other side start shooting again. The smell of burnt hair is unmistakeable. "Got anything to help me out with here?" she asks the soldiers, and one of them perks up, pats himself down until he finds a grenade. Tracer snatches it from him, yanks the pin and tosses it in a high, wide arc. The explosion and subsequent silence is satisfying. 

One soldier grabs her gauntlet as she tries to stand up. He pulls her just enough to look her in the eyes. "Thank you," he says, and she smiles, chuckles, gives a salute. 

"Nothing to worry about now, love, we're here." 

She blinks across streets and shoots down all that she can shoot down, nothing but a blur of bright blue as she goes. " _Everyone? Status?_ " 

"Sweeping the streets," Tracer responds to Mercy. McCree says something like,  _havin' the time of my life, doll_ , and then a yelp and gunfire that make Tracer laugh. 

"I'm on the south side now," she reports as she hides behind an overturned car and readies her pistols. Mercy gives the affirmative to sweep and Tracer moves in blinks of blue light. 

It's quiet, she later realizes, and she slows to a walk. The houses on this street are all closed, windows and doors barricaded with wood, and up ahead Tracer can make out the shape of a school bus parked haphazardly next to an apartment complex. 

And then movement, inside the vehicle. 

Tracer's pistols hum with renewed charge. Subterfuge was never her forte and it still isn't, right now, certainly with the chunky thing on her chest radiating light and just begging to be shot at. So she just blinks forward until she's kicking down the bus door and aiming inside, teeth bared. 

Except, there's people in there and she flinches. She flips her pistols back into their compartments. 

"Civillians," she murmurs under her breath. Parents and teenagers and children stare at her with wide eyes and held breaths. She speaks louder, one finger on the comm in her ear, " _Mercy!_ Civillians, south side, school bus next to an apartment complex." 

" _Are they hurt?_ " 

"No, I don't think so." 

" _Stay with them and protect them. I'll ask for civillian extraction–do_ not  _leave them, Tracer._ " 

" _No–she said apartment complex? There might be more in there. Prob'ly injured,_ " McCree's voice is strained, breathless, and Tracer thinks he's running. " _Leave that bus to me, I ain't too far away now. In the apartment, doll._ "

"Mercy?" Tracer prompts. 

Mercy sighs. " _Very well._ " 

Tracer shuts off the comm and addresses her wide-eyed congregation. "Listen, do any of you know if anyone's left in there?" She points to the apartment building. They murmur, and some shake their heads while some shrug. Tracer grits her teeth and is about to bound out of the bus when a girl, with small fingers and big eyes, pulls her leggings to get her attention. 

That must be her mother who scolds her, but Tracer still smiles and kneels in front of the kid. "Yeah, love?" 

"Are you gonna go in there?" 

"That's the plan, yeah." 

"Are you gonna save people?" the girl asks, eyes crinkled at the corners in an excited grin. "Are you a hero?" 

And Tracer pauses here, looking at the girl and then at the people beyond her, the hopeful faces, the frightened faces, the faces that dare to think that, hey, maybe they're saved. 

She swallows through the lump in her throat and says, with a charming grin and a laugh, "'course I am, love." 

Hero, hero, what does that even _mean_ anymore, being a _hero?_

She bursts into the apartment building, guns at the ready, kicking down doors one by one and checking each room for any more civillians left behind. She clears one floor, two, three, and is searching the last when she finally finds someone. 

A big, burly man with prosthetic calves. They're the old kind, the cheap kind, the ones with no real shape and are just bundles of steel and bent sheets of metal for feet. 

A jitterbug walk comes to Tracer's mind. A jitterbug walk and a wide smile, a loud voice and a loud laugh, a friendly face in a diner and fish and chips. 

She stares at the social worker's worn, slack face as if waiting for that smile to magically come back. 

" _Tracer?_ " Mercy's voice crackles on the comms. " _Tracer, come in, any more civillians in there?_ " 

Tracer takes the comm in her ear off because she doesn't feel like Tracer. She doesn't feel like a hero. She feels like Lena, _Lena_ who's lost and lost and  _lost_ people, laughing bitterly at the irony of being the hero who couldn't save those she really wanted to save. 

 _Hero, hero, hero..._ what does that word even mean, anymore?

Lena cries, knelt on the man's side, whispering apologies, _I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry_ all over again until she can't speak anymore and all she can do is sob. She cries for the social worker next to her. She cries for Richards. She cries for Patrice, who passed in her sleep alone in her Westminster apartment, probably fearing until her last conscious moment that her foster daughter suffered the same fate as her husband. She cries for Patty and Patrick, who lived to believe in her and died still believing in her. 

She cries for all the letters to Birmingham that got sent back. 

She cries for herself. She cries for the girl who will never stop being an orphan, who will never stop being alone. 

She cries until Angela finds her, until Angela kneels next to her and pulls her into a tight embrace. 

"I've lost everyone," Lena sobs, laughing bitterly, voice clogged, vision blurry with tears. "I've lost everyone, Ange, _I've lost everyone._ " 

Angela holds her tighter and stays silent. Lena repeats it until it hurts to say. 

She's lost everyone. 


	3. we could hold hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bit of warning, this chapter is _long_ (almost 14,000 words i think.) i didn't have the heart to cut it because it'll ruin the flow.

_Are you a pusher or are you a puller?_  
_We could hold hands for fifteen minutes in the sauna_  
_We could hold hands for a pool length under water_

 

***

 

Tracer breaks into a sprint and body slams the grunt with the machine gun as he stops to reload. It hurts her more than it hurts him, she's pretty sure, but at least he stumbles pretty far back and gives her time to jump for cover. See, that's an advantage of being short. You get to hit taller people in the face with your head without even planning to. 

Her accelerator gives warning beeps while it recharges and she runs, dives behind a stack of overturned steel shelves and a fallen concrete pillar. When the gunfire starts again, the makeshift barricade shakes with the force of bullets and her heart is hammering in her chest,  _holy shit,_ hands frantically hitting the accelerator in the hopes of speeding up its recharge. 

The comms are still dead and she shuts her eyes, says a prayer, hopes her accelerator  _this bloody thing, oh my god_ gets recharged  _right now_ because her life quite literally depends on it. 

And there, just when things possibly couldn't get any worse, the barricade on her back vibrates violently to show it's about to give. She yelps, makes to move to a different cover, but there's a flash of steel and a crackle of electric blue. A jovial laugh announces the arrival of Reinhardt, shield deploying over the barricade for them both. 

"Oh,  _shite_ and all that is  _bloody_ holy!" Tracer throws herself at Reinhardt and gives the best squeeze she could with their size differences and Reinhardt's armor in the way. "Oh, I love you! Mate, I love you! I'll marry you, whatever you want!" 

Reinhardt gives his big old laugh like they're just in the mess hall and joking over breakfast instead of inches to death in the battlefield. Tracer starts to snort out giggles, too. Reinhardt's glee is too contagious. "You can take him out for me once this," he pokes Tracer's accelerator, "has charged, _ja?_ And _then_ we talk about marriage afterwards!" 

"So you really want to marry me?" 

"Oh! You are a beautiful young woman! What is there to not want to marry?" 

Reinhardt holds the barrier, one arm out to cover Tracer protectively in a poise she can read as ready to throw himself at her any given time. Tracer can see chips on his armor and dark scorch marks on his pauldrons and gauntlets. She feels herself frown.

"We alright here, love?" she asks lowly. 

Reinhardt deems it fit to guffaw as a response. "Are we ready?" he shouts over the gunfire. Tracer watches the light of her accelerator go steady, beeping its own assent. Her pistols flip to her hands and she crouches, ready. 

"Bet your arse, I am!"  

Reinhardt disengages the barrier. In the middle of the gunfire and spraying bullet shells, Tracer is a trail of blinking blue and unleashing pulse rounds where they're due. The grunt goes down, scorched flesh and burnt metal. 

"Was that good enough for marriage?" Tracer asks cheekily. She gets a hearty laugh in response.

She tries not to think about how one shoulder drops slower than the other when Reinhardt shrugs. Pretends not to be worried when he follows her with a small limp, his boot grinding unpleasantly on the linoleum. She looks at Reinhardt, and Reinhardt raises a gauntlet, shaking it dismissively. "Ah, just some bruising," his voice drops to a whisper, "don't tell Mercy." 

" _I already know, Reinhardt._ " Reinhardt groans loudly. Tracer whoops into the comms and her own voice echoes back a second later, high pitched and staticky. 

" _Still does that, but it'll do,_ " Winston says on the line. " _How is everyone? Are we all here?_ " 

Tracer hears Mercy's and Jack's voices come through with static and tinny feedback. Relief washes through her like a wave. They're heroes, yes, warriors and soldiers, but they still bleed. And she dreads to think the bleeding happening under Reinhardt's punctured leg armors. "I'm with Reinhardt! He needs some help here," she reports. 

" _Bah_ , nonsense, I am fine!" Reinhardt says, and his helm turns toward Tracer. Tracer imagines a solid glare behind it and she raises her brows in challenge. He shakes his head. "The children! Have you recovered the rest of them?" 

" _They're being herded up to the helipad on the rooftop as we speak. The signal interruption was a diversion._ " Jack says the last part with a growl. " _It took our attention away from the west wing._ " 

" _Still in the east wing, I've done what I can to restore signals,_ " Winston reports. " _Mercy, where are you?_ " 

" _Basement. I have a few other children with me and have barricaded the doors enough._ " 

" _Tracer? Reinhardt?_ " 

"Already on our way up, love," Tracer answers in sing-song. 

Jack's voice comes through again. " _I'm coming up with the both of you. Winston, get to Mercy and the children as soon as possible. Everyone be safe. Don't do anything rash._ " 

Tracer has a  _pretty good_ feeling Jack meant that last line for her. With the way Reinhardt snorts, he probably thinks so, too. "Oh, come off it, Jack! I'm an honor student, remember? Can't get any more careful than me, yeah?" 

" _I'm sure Mercy has a bit to say about that._ " 

" _A lot m_ _ore than a bit, really._ " 

They laugh now in the comms, and Tracer tries to maintain a pout but it's hard, because Reinhardt is howling, and Winston is chuckling, and even Jack huffs a laugh. It's hard to remember the exact time when  _Cmdr Morrison_ became just  _Jack,_ because everything about everyone feels so natural, so _warm_ , and moments blend so seamlessly into each other, ball up into one bundle of memories. Overwatch is as much a home now as it is an armed base made to house heroes. 

Tracer stops herself there, because she's lost a home twice now. She pulls herself out from the undercurrent of dread and fear. 

_Don't be so morbid._

"Up there!" Reinhardt huffs. He's panting now, the difficulty of running up flights of stairs with a wounded leg showing with how he's shaking. Tracer stops to reach toward him but he shakes his head, points to the doors of the rooftop. "Up there! The children!" 

She frowns but nods her head and blinks the rest of the way up. The sooner they finish, the sooner Reinhardt can get medical attention. And the children, she has a duty to these children, these orphans,  _Patty and Patrick's orphans,_ and she can't let them down,  _no, she can't–_

" _Tracer_ ," Reinhardt calls after her hoarsely. "Wait, be caref–" 

She throws her whole weight at the door, pistols flipping to her hands. There's a click like wires snapping, and then a beep. 

Light. Light and fire on her body, vision washed out by white and a flare of orange. An explosion fills her ears, shakes her skull, and she hears Jack's shriek and Reinhardt's shout before the silence. 

She's thrown, hovers in the air and time slows before it sizzles out. Her body slams on the concrete. She whimpers, she thinks she whimpers, and the white in her vision pulses before it clears, colors coming in blurs like watercolors dripping on canvass. She makes out the color of the sky and something red on her outstretched hand. Pain spreads on her skull and the rest of her body. 

She feels moist. She's bleeding. 

A high-pitched whistling in her ears makes her head hurt more and she rolls to her stomach, getting to her knees with difficulty. Her goggles fall off her face and land on the concrete cracked and bloody. Her stomach feels like it's been hit five times by Reinhardt's hammer. 

Reinhardt. She sees him at her side, barrier deployed, arm out at her as always. His head's turned to her and she blinks at him, blearily, the whistling in her ears going out. Voices now, Jack panicking through the comms, shouting at both him and Tracer. Winston, growling, using her name instead of her callsign. Mercy's words straight and voice loud, but cracking.  

Tracer looks at her hands and sees one of her pistols has been ripped off her bracer. When she tries to get up, the world moves with her. 

"M'fine," she groans into the comms. She ignores the admonishments coming through the line to check on her accelerator, her _anchor_ ( _don't disappear again, don't want to disappear, please, no_ ) and sees the blue light intact but the rest of the thing barely hanging on to her chest. Her hands tremble on the cracks of the metal. "M'fine, I'm up." 

" _No, you stay_ down _, Tracer,_ " Jack growls. He's huffing, sounds like he's running-stomping up stairs. " _You stay down and stay behind Reinhardt. I'm close now!_ " 

Tracer moves again, hefts her head higher up to look and realizes they're being shot at. Grunts on the opposite corner of the rooftop fire at them and there, behind them, children, cowering and crying. The doors of the rooftop are gone and scorch marks are dark around the floors and doorway. She sees smoke there, too, and the fragments of an explosive. Trip wire. 

What was that about not doing anything rash?

She forces herself up and swats Reinhardt's arm away when he makes to push her back. Reinhardt bristles. " _Lena!_ " 

Tracer ignores him, readies her remaining pistol and tries to shoot through the vertigo and the ache. She feels like crying, really, because her entire body is screaming at her to drop back down and  _listen_ to Jack but she sees the children now, and she has to save them, has to take them  _back–_

Jack arrives, she thinks. She's not sure, because she drops to a crumpled pile of limbs when the pain becomes too much to bear. People are shouting. Overhead, the shape of an airship comes to view. Tracer lets herself go. 

 

* * *

 

They call themselves Talon. A terrorist organization with a presence in Europe and the Americas and some minor activities in Asia, but the last is yet to be determined for sure. It's highly likely though, Jack said, because the criminal patterns are the same with those associated with Talon activity in both Europe and America. Smuggling, cyber crimes, assassination and murder, illegal drug trade... 

The latest additions to their already thick MO are kidnapping and human trafficking. The orphans they took from the London outskirts and everywhere else were wares more than hostages. 

They see a lot of Talon after that. And by  _they,_ that means Overwatch operatives excluding Tracer. Lena's kept strictly in either the medbay or her quarters and is limited to one route from both points with the mess hall somewhere there in the middle. She made headlines, at least. Although she wasn't too happy with how fucked up she looked on TV with all the blood and the scorch marks and the wounds,  _hey,_ she was on TV. 

"I liked that thing you said–what was it?" 

Lena grumbles around a mouthful of cereal and stabs her spoon into the concoction of flakes and milk. 

"C'mon, what was it?" 

A sigh. "Cheers, _love_ , cavalry's here–" 

Jesse howls with laughter and slaps his knee twice, spitting hashbrown bits everywhere. Lena kicks him under the table. "Blown _half to bits_ and still with the salute! Hoo  _boy!_ " 

Three broken ribs, Angela said. Would've been more if not for her chronal accelerator taking most of the damage to her core region. Concussions, for sure, (" _you're a real magnet for head injuries, aren't you?_ ) dislocated shoulder, a broken arm, and a myriad of other injuries Lena made a smartassed quip in response to. Got whacked atop the head with Angela's stick, she did. Angela didn't appreciate that, not one bit. 

Nor did Jack. Not even an hour after Angela's scolding, Jack had walked into the medbay and prattled on, red-faced about carelessness and stupidity and  _discipline,_ and suspended Lena from all Overwatch agent duties until further notice. 

So, medbay, quarters, and mess hall is the pattern. She's banned from even the gyms and the training room because it's doctor's orders not to strain herself physically while she's recovering. She manages to wheedle Angela into adding the lounging hall to the short list of areas she could visit at least, and Angela allows the request under one condition. 

"With the salute. Come on." 

Lena just knows this'll be the face of Tracer for a very, very long time. She sighs. "Cheers, love, cavalry's here." 

 

She's in the lounging hall when the newest addition to the Gibraltar watchpoint arrives. In the striking posture of a military man and the charmingly rugged outfit of a man of action, Mjr Gérard Lacroix of the GIGN from the National Gendarmerie of France walks in with all brooding confidence. He's tall, dark-skinned, and dark-eyed, with hair and a stubble immaculately trimmed. He takes Lena's hand with a certain firmness that leads Lena to think he's  _exactly_ the kind of guy that's all business when it's business. She side eyes Jack and sure enough, he already looks like he's half in love. 

"Agent Lena Oxton, otherwise addressed by her callsign as Tracer," Jack  _meant_ to introduce probably, if not for Lena completely cutting him off and shaking Gérard's hand with all the grace and excitement of a toddler. 

"Lena Oxton, love! Won't find a soul faster in this watchpoint—or any other watchpoint, I tell ya—than me! You need anything done in a jiff? I'm your gal, mate! I also happen to know the command to override the internet restrictions in this place, just give me a holle—" 

"If you follow me this way, Gérard, you'll find the medbay and our head doctor. She's an agreeable,  _professional_ woman, if you need anything done..." 

Gérard's quite the Talon expert, she learns later on in a meeting. He brings up renders of maps of Europe, of the Americas, of Asia, and lists crimes, connections, activities dating from at least three years back, the first time Talon became big enough to form a blip in law enforcement huds. "We believe they've been established since the war, or at least its peak," he says, his voice low, words smooth and fluid, accent near indistinguishible. "But it wasn't until the war ended that they found enough room to maneuver. Their end goal, we still don't know." 

"Do you have anything on their bases?" Mercy inquires. "To have the capacity to act on wide parameters should mean multiple headquarters." 

"We have uncovered a mere few." The maps pan out and red dots glow on a select few points. Lena sees Beijing, New York, Mexico, London, Sri Lanka... "We also believe they have additional bases in Reykjavík and Saudi Arabia, but these are unconfirmed. 

"These–" the maps disappear and photos pop up, some, horrifyingly, with faces all of them recognize. It's not only Lena who makes a disturbed sound. "–are some of the connections they have that we suspect. As you can see... some faces are quite familiar. Politicians, businesspeople, prominent figures..." 

"Who is this?" Reinhardt asks. He's pointing at a man that is a constant in more than half of the pictures. Short and stocky, with dyed blonde hair and glasses. 

Gérard zooms in on two photos with the clearest facial profile. "A Mr Toshio Uematsu. Someone we believe is in the upper echelon of Talon and acts as a correspondent to some of their connections." He brings up a file on Toshio. "Was a notorious gunrunner and smuggler in Japan for ten fruitful years until all his activities suddenly ceased two years ago. And here he is now, escorted by uniformed Talon officers." 

The room goes silent. Everyone is staring at the renders if not the tabletop.

Lena isn't finding comfort in the grave quiet. She spins her chair and taps her fingers on the armrests, restless. "So, which base do we attack first?" 

 

* * *

 

The Talon base in Beijing is raided and secured by Overwatch in no more than two months. Jack headed the operation with Gérard's help and Mercy, Tracer, and Reinhardt on the team. It was an easy operation owing to the advantage of surprise. Attacking the others won't be so simple after the first, though, that's obvious enough. Talon's got warning bells now. 

They get something from Beijing at least. Armaments, documents, more Talon merchandise set for distribution. Information from the found documents is informative, if only a little useless: too many items are redacted and it doesn't take a genius to figure out Beijing is one of the lesser Talon bases. 

Glossing through the other papers, however, brought some disturbing things to light. Talon has a Sciences division, and the division is somewhat related to their latest hobby of human trafficking. Winston says there are portions about human experimentation and augmentation, but the specifics aren't there and there's too little to work with from there. 

In the end, they stale. Watching out for Talon is the best they can do now. Gérard is mostly assigned to Talon-related operations rather than omnic-human violence containment in peacekeeping tasks. That's what he was invited to Overwatch for, after all. Lena remembers a time when Angela told her, here, they stick to tasks given to them. Gérard doesn't complain. 

Actually, Gérard doesn't say much at all. He's a private kind of person, and Lena thinks that's got a lot to do with his years in the GIGN. His friendliness is limited to basic decency: greetings when you pass each other in the halls and small talks in the mess hall. Jesse mostly shrugs when asked about him. Reinhardt will say they haven't gone drinking yet, and Winston will give a pleasant comment. Jack is close with him the way a superior is to a performing subordinate. Lena's noticed that he's comfortable around Angela, though, seeing as she's the only one he doesn't call Agent _insert last name here._ She thinks that's owing to being close ages. Same generations and what not. 

And Lena, well, Lena is trying to find out more about his life. 

"So, you got a house outside the watchpoint?" she asks, folding her pizza slice in half. "Jack allows that? I always thought agents were supposed to be in-base or something like that." 

Gérard shakes his head, opens his packed lunch with a focused expression only Mjr Gérard Lacroix can, all intensity whatever he does. He's not aloof per se, but he's not exactly the kind to not pick an empty table during lunch time. Won't turn you away if you sat with him, though. He just enjoys the quiet, Lena thinks. 

"He made an exception. I brought my wife with me." 

"Ooh! A wife, eh? Why am I just learning about this now?" 

Gérard gives her a look. Brow raised, lips a straight line but something like amusement in his eyes. "You never asked, no?" Hey, so he knows how to kid around. 

"Stupidest excuse ever." Lena blows a raspberry and jams a mouthful of pizza into her mouth, chewing as she speaks. " _Sho whahs her name, mate?_ " 

"The same as mine, of course. Something with Lacroix." 

"You're a funny guy, you are." 

"Only because you're a funny girl, too." 

He doesn't keep pictures of his wife, he says, out of habit. Nothing personal is on his person at any time when he's on duty. He doesn't talk about her beyond the basics, and by the basics, with Gérard, that essentially means she has two legs, and two arms, and two eyes... 

"You know what, mate, keep your bloody wife," Lena huffs in exasperation after thirty whole minutes of her attempted interrogation. Gérard almost laughs. His chest pushes out once and he smiles with affection. 

"Oh, I intend to." 

 

* * *

 

The UN holds galas at least once a year for congenial purposes, leaders coming together and sharing in cultures, strengthening bonds, enjoying the luxuries of the hosting state. It's relaxing, but heavily political as well. It's here that power meets power, people of high political stations speaking with other people of the same, discussing plans and forming deep liaisons for whatever purpose. With so many important guests in one place, it's only right security is heavy. 

The whole of Main Street is closed off to civillians along with a portion of Upper Town. Gibraltar's Convent, the esteemed home of the Governor of Gibraltar, is lit with golden and silver lights. Cars of varying degrees of luxury and bright colors are lined on the streets with guards in black patrolling every nook and cranny, reporting to the comms in their ears. Overwatch is there too, of course, to provide additional security more than as guests. Regardless, they're well-dressed and are allowed to mingle in the main hall with other attendees. 

Lena arrives with Winston. Fashionably late, she'd like to say, if fashionable meant the both of them having difficulties putting on tuxedos due to the complications of an accelerator and a bulky form. 

"Lena, hurry!" 

"Yeah, _yeah_ , hold your horses, love, don't lose 'em!" Lena squeezes past guests coming and going, ignoring the bright-eyed looks she gets along the way. "Winston! Have you got our– _oh, hi, love! Oh, thanks, I'm a big fan of me, too! Can't talk now though, will you excuse me? You look dashing, by the way!_ –have you got our invitations? I don't have them in my pockets." 

"Lena," Winston huffs with exasperation, narrowly dodging the elbow of a too-gleeful guest. "I'm a talking gorilla in a tux and you have a glowing blue thing on your chest. I'm _positive_ they'll know it's Tracer and Winston that want to get in." 

"Well, _someone's_ a tardy grump."

Sure enough, they get in with little trouble—little being, the guards at the door insisting a check on Lena's accelerator and Winston trying to explain the invention—and they're met by Jack, surprisingly elegant in a tux and Angela stunning in a flowing blue dress. They put the _power_ in power walk. 

"Winston, where've you  _been?_ " Jack demands. 

"When you've figured out how hard it is putting on a tux with my size, build, and general constitution,  _then_ you can use that tone with me—" 

"Enough dallying, they've been waiting for you both for half an hour," Angela cuts off. She pushes them both and they set off with no arguments, thankfully. When they've gone, she turns to Lena with a smile and a wink. Lena laughs. 

" _Ange,_ " she breathes, stepping back to get a better look, and Angela helps her by twisting appropriately, laughing. "You look  _magnificent,_ love!" 

"And you, _handsome_ ," Angela supplies, straightening Lena's lapels. She's wearing heels and Lena has to crane her neck to see her face. "You have the perfect figure for suits, I never thought of it before." 

"We should wear clothes like these more often. In assignments, maybe."  

"And look like idiots in the battlefield?" 

"I think you mean _drop-dead gorgeous_  but you've always had a funny way of wording things, Ange." 

Some ways away, Lena spies Reinhardt in a flashy, white tux, laughing with a small, thick-bodied man, wild blonde hair and beard and all. Close by is a dark-skinned woman with long, black hair and intricate marks lining her eyes. She laughs with them, toned figure shaking in her dress, drink in hand. 

"Agents assigned to the Middle Eastern guard," Angela says smilingly. She takes Lena by the shoulders when the music stops and the lights dim just enough to emphasize the decorated dais at the front. "Here, it's Jack's and Winston's speeches now." 

Jack, in his straight-spined glory and classic masculine appeal, smiles from the podium. Winston fidgets at his side, reading papers, rehearsing his speech. Lena laughs under her breath. 

It's nothing like Lena hasn't already heard before. Jack is a soldier, not necessarily a show man, and he sticks to the basics with Overwatch and its duties–he acknowledges the UN and its members: his comrades and the many other men and women working with them. He maintains that they are here to make peace possible. He maintains that they will not stop fighting, delivering each line with the surety and determination Cmdr Jack Morrison is known for. 

Winston stutters—Lena laughs fondly with Angela—and has to introduce himself twice because he says  _Chef Engineer_ instead of Chief Engineer, but he finds his confidence when he gets to the scientific parts of his speech. Projects, not for mere armaments but also for medical care, with the assistance of one Dr Angela Ziegler, to which Angela flushes with pleasure, nodding to the smiling looks in her direction. Restoration of the UN space program and command, better training programs and weaponry for local law enforcement units and military... 

Overwatch's Vision and Mission, put simply, and Lena applauds with the crowd when they finish. Angela paws Lena's shoulder just as the music starts up again. 

"Good job, Winston!" Lena professes, chuckling. Angela grins. 

"Mhm. Oh, look there. It's Gérard," she breathes. Lena watches her eyes go wide with wonder and her mouth slack with surprise. Admiration? "Is that his wife? Lena, Gérard brought his _wife_ , wouldn't you believe it?" 

Lena couldn't, is her first thought. When she turns around, smile placed and an introduction- _slash_ -teasing ready on her tongue, her second thought is _she_   _really_ _couldn't believe it._

She shakes, feet to her shoulders, blood going cold in her veins, the chasm she long thought was filled in her chest cracking open again to crippling proportions. She doesn't breathe for a good ten seconds, blinking madly, glancing around in desperation, echoes and echoes of voices ringing in her ears, wringing her throat shut, a sudden dizziness shooting up to her head. 

Sounds, echoes, the music, voices: the main room bursts to frightening sharpness before her very eyes and she's hyperaware now, hyperaware of her body, of the guests, of the guards lingering in the corners, the conversations around them—

Panic. Panic crushes her ribs, tightens them around her heart and her accelerator feels  _so much_ heavier now—

She runs. It's her first instinct, to run, slipping into the crowd behind them and hiding amidst the guests around the buffet tables. She keeps her back turned, eyes still wide, fingers trembling around a champagne glass she picks off a tray. 

"Le— _what?_ " 

" _Wasn't Agent Oxton here? I'm pretty sure I just saw you two together..._ " 

" _...yes, she_ was  _just here, right next to me..._ " 

" _...funny, I have someone she's been wanting to meet..._ " 

Lena empties the glass in one go, shutting her eyes tight and sucking her tongue against her teeth. She swipes another glass off a tray and leans forward on one of the tables, close to hyperventilating, brain threatening to black out with her. Calm calm  _calm, what is wrong with you? What is your problem?_

_Isn't this supposed to be good?_

She downs her second glass and then a third, wiping sweat off her temple with a sleeve. She does not turn around. 

"Agent Oxton!" 

She stiffens. She  _does not_ turn around. 

"Lena! Hey, Lena!" 

 _She does not turn around, does not want to turn around. She_ refuses  _to turn around—_

Angela, it's Angela who paws her arm and turns her around and Lena's already grinning, hiding her hands behind her back to cover the shaking. "O—oi! Just went for a drink, I was gonna get you one—" 

"Agent Oxton!" Gérard calls out with a wave, a rare, wide smile on his face as he approaches them both. At his side, looped arm to arm with him, dress flowing and dazzling and shining in deep purple, beautiful like she is, always has been, will always be—

Lena wants to curl her arms around her stomach because she feels sick now. She feels like vomiting. Feels like running. Feels like—

"Agent Oxton," Gérard starts breathlessly, a childish sort of excitement lighting his eyes, something she's never seen before. "My wife, Amélie." 

Lena's eyes go to the woman in question. Hair long, dark, pulled up, skin like smooth, smooth caramel, eyes brown and almost golden, the aristocratic nose, the high cheekbones. A smile, so wide and so divine that Lena already feels like she wants to cry. 

She offers a hand— _w_ _hat's the point,_ something screams in her head—and swallows, says, "Lena, Lena Oxton, I..." 

Her proffered hand is readily ignored. She's pulled, drawn forward, a buoy yanked by a wave, lolling as arms go around her and a body presses against hers, warm and...  _real._ Her breath hitches. Something inside her plops, spreads, _heat_ , and slowly, she winds her arms around her, too. Around Amélie. She feels her breath come out shuddering. 

"Lena," Amélie whispers, and her voice slams against Lena with all the force of gravity. Lena shuts her eyes. "Lena, oh,  _ma chérie,_ it's really _you_." 

Lena, breathless and falling apart and trying to stop herself from shaking, manages to see Gérard's and Angela's surprised expressions around all she can see of Amélie. Amélie is still smiling. Lena feels herself chuckle uncertainly, her own mouth stretching to match. 

"Amélie?" Gérard prompts, and Lena sees his confused face. It hurts, around that part. To see he doesn't know. To understand Amélie hasn't told him about them as children, them in the horrors of a world at war. Lena pushes the discovery to the background of her thinking. One emotional turmoil at a time, please. 

Angela's face pops up in front of Lena, similarly questioning. "You know each other?" she asks. Lena doesn't know what to say but she opens her mouth, fishes around for an answer, and she's cut off before she could start because Jack is calling her to the podium. 

"Wait—" 

" _Tracer!_ " Reinhardt howls across the hall, pointedly ignoring the scandalized looks he gets. " _Tracer, yes, let's go!_ "  

Jack, once he's finished staring Reinhardt down—with a small smile, though, Lena sees—clears his throat and speaks again. "Again, here is Tracer to deliver a few words. The very charming _face_ of Overwatch." 

" _What?_ " Lena splutters stupidly, covering her face while the guests erupt in applause around her. She clutches Angela's shoulder. It shakes with surprised laughter under her palm. "Oi! Ange, I wasn't told about this, I don't want to—" 

"Come on, Lena, just a few words, we all know you have many." 

"But—" 

A hand, warmer, touches her arm and slides down to her wrist. Lena looks to Amélie, and Amélie grins at her warmly. "Go," she urges, something like an amused chuckle going out with the word. "Go on." 

Pushing, still. Pushing. 

Lena breathes out. Well, okay. 

The applause only intensifies when she's up on the dais, grinning awkwardly on the podium with Jack and Winston on the flank. She's rightly disoriented at this point. Winston tips her a wink when she looks at him,  _begging for help, oh my god,_ and only nods for her to start when the crowd goes quiet. 

"O—oi, hey, _ah_ ," Lena clears her throat, "listen, had I known I'd have to speak up here I'd have written something down to save me from embarrassing myself because, y'know,  _Chef Engineer_ and all..." 

A sound laugh comes from the crowd and that buffs up her confidence a little. She clears her throat. 

"You call us heroes, we know you do," she starts. "And, I suppose we are, because what do heroes do? Save people, save the world, keep the peace, beat the bad guys, all that, we already know. We're heroes, but we don't always win, do we?" Silence. She takes a breath, finds the words. "We're heroes that win some and lose some. We've lost things, too. Lost people. Lost battles. And... 

"We know _you_ have, too. We lost so much from the war and continue to lose so much later still—but, see, that's what I'm trying to say here. You don't call us heroes because we always win. We're heroes because we _try_. Overwatch is Overwatch because it tries. We're heroes because we believe in something, in peace,  _in kindness_ , and we work for it. With it. 

"You don't always win," her voice cracks, and she pauses to steady it. "But if you try hard enough, if you believe enough, if you help each other enough—human, omnic, the differences are so little—and be  _kind_ enough, there's the hope that you will. If you do it for the love you have for others, the love for the cause you believe in, your compassion, your kindness, there will _always_ be the hope that _you win,_ because goodness does, in the end."  

She swallows. In the crowd is the one who taught her these things. She doesn't let her eyes stray. "We can all be heroes because we can all try, and I hope we do." She inhales, closes her eyes, feels her throat tighten and chest start to hurt. "It's like my ma used to say. The world could always use more heroes." 

Lena turns away, blinking furiously and playing off the wreckage stirring in her chest with a cheeky smile. The applause is loud and long, drumming against her stomach. Jack pats her shoulder. "That was fantastic, Lena." 

Lena chuckles, but she feels her cheeks tremble and start to give. She holds the smile, though, because that's what she does. That's what Tracer's all about. "Didn't bumble anything up, did I?" 

"No, that was beautiful." 

Her throat tightens. She nods, fixes her hair to have something to do with her hands. "Just  _when_ did I become the face of Overwatch, Jack? I feel like I wasn't informed in advance. Oh, hang on,  _I wasn't._ " 

It's Winston who answers. " _Cheers, love, cavalry's here_." 

Jack snorts. Lena rolls her eyes all the way down the dais. 

All air in her lungs is expelled when she's swept up by Reinhardt in a bear hug, his laughing breaths hot on her forehead. "Beautiful, Lena, beautiful! Ah, you brought tears to my eyes!" he professes, still holding Lena up. Sure enough, he wipes his eyes on her shoulder (" _oi!_ ") "Torbjörn won't admit it, but he shed a tear as well, I'm sure!" 

"I didn't!" the smaller man protests gruffly even as he sniffles once. The woman with them pats his shoulder and snorts. 

"You did, Torb." 

"Ah, to hell with you both!" 

"Ana Amari," the woman segues smoothly. She holds out a hand in offering when Reinhardt finally decides to let Lena go. "This grumpy one is Torbjörn, and he will say he's not grumpy but I urge you to believe he is." 

"Oh, for the _love of—_ " 

"Beautiful words from a beautiful soul," Ana continues, bowing her head. She certainly has a way with words herself, Ana, and Lena feels warmth in her ears as she shakes Ana's hand. "Overwatch is lucky to have you as its face. Lucky to have you at all." 

"Aw, bloody hell, I was just trying not to bumble it up up there. Thanks." 

"Lena! You must come with us! We are to drink, and I would very much like for you to witness me outdrink Torbjörn!" 

"Oho _ho,_   _I_ do the outdrinking here, Reinhardt, need I remind you of—" 

"—ah, but what about—" 

"—that does not count! How about—" 

"I actually think I'm just going to take it easy for the rest of the night," Lena declines, more to Ana now because Reinhardt and Torbjorn are absorbed in their argument that's quickly growing into a screaming match. Ana waves her hand dismissively. 

"Worry none,  _habibti._ Off you go before they finish. They'll carry you with them if they have to." 

"It was nice to meet you, Ana." 

"And you." 

Lena slips away, past guests who acknowledge her and try to shake her hand. She does her best to smile and nod her head, energy going out of her with each step. She wants to sit down for a moment. Just sit. But she can't, because she has to face this—Amélie—and the reality of many, many things, has to ask questions and understand. 

She finds Amélie eventually, in Gérard's arms and spinning with him to the music. Gérard keeps missing steps and is laughing at himself. Amélie is still grace, still talent, and...

She's smiling, beautifully, looking at Gérard and their feet, up and down, shoulders vibrating. Gérard is grinning, all warmth now, like melted candle wax clinging to Amélie. Very unlike the Gérard Lacroix Lena has come to know at the Gibraltar watchpoint. 

Something in Lena dims, digs the chasm deeper in her chest. She turns around to head for the balcony.  

Jesse is there when she steps out. Cigar in his mouth, tux unkempt, the cowboy hat  _really ruining_ the outfit there. He turns when she approaches and gives her a dopey smile, tipping his hat. 

"Evenin', doll." 

"Why you out here?" 

He shrugs, elbows on the rail and weight draped on them. "Not my kinda party." Taking a deep drag, he looks at Lena again. "How 'bout you?" 

Lena leans on the railing the same way he is. "Needed some air." 

"Mm. Nice speech. I heard it." 

She smiles half-heartedly. "Thanks." 

They let the party finish with them out there, looking at the sky in silence. 

 

* * *

 

"So you  _met_ his wife?" 

Lena patiently pours milk into her cereal bowl, staring with great focus. She hums an affirmative and lowers her head,  _really_ watches that milk trail. 

"And?" 

She sets the milk carton down and stirs the concoction with the same intensity as when she was pouring the milk. Anything to avoid Jesse's eyes, really. "And... she has two legs, and two arms, and two eyes, like Gérard said." 

Jesse snorts and bites into his hashbrown. "What's her name?" 

Lena swallows, rolls the syllables around in her mouth like candy. "Amélie," she murmurs. She hears Jesse hum. 

"Sounds like the name of a gorgeous dame." 

And an old, old reflex, one Lena thought she had locked away long ago with the last of her returned letters, pops out like the foot of a hit knee: "she is. Very. Amélie's pretty." 

Jesse whistles and Lena realizes her mistake too late, heat on her ears and teeth ground in her mouth. Discomfort lodges itself in her gut. It doesn't feel right, now, thinking of Amélie that way. Thinking of Amélie at all. For plenty of reasons. 

Jesse's chair creaks backward. "Speak of the devil and her husband shall come," he stage-whispers, getting to his feet and stuffing the last of his hashbrown into his mouth. "Mornin', major!" 

"Good morning, Agent McCree." Lena concentrates on getting the right ratio of cereal flakes to milk in her spoon. Jesse's seat creaks back forward, and Gérard's usual breakfast of bacon, eggs, and a slice of fruit is set down across her own meal. "Good morning... Agent Oxton." 

"G'morning, Gérard," Lena says with a solidly-willed smile. Gérard smiles politely back and starts with breakfast. 

"Did you leave early last night? Amélie and I looked for you." 

Lena has to consciously keep herself from freezing up. "Not really. I was out in the balcony with Jesse," she supplies. "Truth be told, I was feeling pretty pooped last night and just wanted to relax a little. Air and all that." 

Emotional turmoil does that, comes the thought. Gérard nods his understanding. "I was quite surprised to learn you two are something of childhood friends. I never did ask about her orphan childhood." 

"S'probably good you didn't, mate, that wasn't really a very grand time. For me and her both," Lena says. She eats a spoonful of milk and cereal with a reasonable ratio and chews slowly before continuing. "Not that the orphanage was all terrible," there was Patty, and Patrick, and the starry skies and cleaner air... "but you get what I mean, yeah?" 

"Mm." Gérard nods his head, dabs his mouth with his handkerchief, and looks at Lena with a smile. "Amélie wants me to invite you for lunch." 

Lena's face slacks in shock and Gérard sees it, _of course he does_ , and he rears back slowly. He almost frowns. "Oh, well—" 

"It's just an invitation, of course, if you have things on your agenda, I can—" 

"No, mate, no," Lena hastily amends. "Tha–that's great. Just wasn't expecting it, um, you meant lunch today?" 

"Only if you're free..." 

"Which I am! The free _iest._ Free _ier_ than a bird, I am. So, how..." 

Gérard nods and smiles, in that same way Lena's seen him smile in Amélie's presence. Lena breathes in. She knows the feeling. " _Wonderful_. Wonderful, I'll let her know. She'll be thrilled." 

 

Walking into the apartment unit, Lena is greeted with beige walls and dark carpets. Beyond those, the first thing she notices is the smell. Lunch, of course, with the faintest trace of herbs—herbal fragrances. 

"Amé?" Gérard calls out from behind Lena, and Lena shuffles to the side to let him in. "You can hang your coat here." He hangs his own jacket on the coat rack to demonstrate. "Amé? Where are you? I brought a guest!" 

Lena shrugs off her coat and hangs it, so very careful with her ministrations. She steps back from the coat rack, sweeps her eyes around the immediate receiving area. Everything matches the walls and floors, colors and styles and all. Gérard has gone. 

Dread, she recognizes the feeling, is wrapped around her throat. Nerves and fear. 

What do they say to each other? What does Lena say? What will Amélie say? 

She walks further in, cautious, careful not to disturb anything. A space resembling the living room comes up ahead and she pokes her head in, knocking on the nearest wall. 

Amélie is on one of the couches, hair up as always, knit sweater snug on her figure. She sits, curled, like a satisfied cat, and looks up from her book to witness Lena flinch and fidget. 

Lena can only imagine how hideously earnest she must look to earn a low laugh. The sound skitters on her shoulders and slides down her spine, fills her lungs with air. 

"Gérard is heating up the food and setting the table. I didn't expect for you to come so late. Make yourself at home," Amélie offers simply before going back fo her book. 

Lena clears her throat and moves to sit on the seat closest to her and coincidentally farthest from Amélie. She feels like she should say something. "Gotta be careful with what you tell me, love, I may do just that and you might not like how I am at home." 

"We've lived together, _chérie._ You might find I won't be very surprised with your house habits." 

Now that just gets Lena's neck burning. She coughs into her fist. 

Quiet, after that. She busies herself with looking around the area, eyes glossing over the pictures hanging on the walls and the trinkets on the shelves and on end tables. The pictures are mostly of dancers, of Amélie and others like her, to be specific. There are a few of other people too, of course. She recognizes the Birmingham couple on one frame. 

On one wall stands a grand bookshelf filled with volumes. She manages to make out various academic tomes—Philosophy, History, Psychology, different sciences—and then other literature. Novels and poetry, some titles duplicated but with differently numbered editions. She sees George Orwell in the fray, Pablo Neruda, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Franz Kafka, William S. Burroughs... 

And everything about what she's seeing: the absolute symmetry of the decorations and hanging frames, the matching furniture, the smell,  _the books,_ is so brilliantly, perfectly  _Amélie_ that Lena can't keep herself from smiling. It takes her a moment to realize Amélie hasn't flipped a single page of her book since she came in. She turns to see Amélie watching. 

She behaves herself now, eyes forward and lips rolled into her mouth. 

"The hair suits you, you know." 

She turns her head, sees Amélie has put away her book to look directly at her. Amélie's smile is... amused, Lena decides. Amélie leans to rest her elbow on an armrest, palm catching her chin. How one could make such a trivial movement look so elegant is beyond Lena. "It's very...  _you._ Rash and stubborn. Wild." 

"Should I or should I not take that as a compliment?" 

"Oh it's a compliment, mm." 

"Righto," Lena says, and when Amélie smirks at her, she finds herself doing the same. Why is this so easy? Why, after all the years, is this still so easy? The dread around her throat peels back, lets her breathe more and think. "This  _apartment_ is very you." 

"Elaborate." 

"Oh, let's see, mm. How everything's in order, so put together, and the furnitures match the carpets and the wallpapers–even the bloody drapes, look at that–and these  _books,_ now  _this_ bookshelf is impressive, I can..." 

Lena's brows furrow.  _I can almost make out the life you've lived._ "I can definitely say the place is a lot like you, yeah." 

Amélie's brow quirks and her smile widens, grows charmingly lopsided as she chuckles. When she moves to sit on the sofa with Lena, Lena has to remind herself to relax, that it's just Amélie. 

Amélie, who has answers to a lot of her questions. Amélie who has a lot to tell her. 

"You haven't changed much," Amélie says, something like wonder in her voice. A little more movement and her knee will touch Lena's thigh. She's barefoot. Lena watches her curl and uncurl her toes on the cushions. "I am surprised by how you haven't changed much. I always thought I wouldn't recognize you if I saw you again, but..." She reaches out, rests her fingertips on Lena's cheek. Lena watches her eyelids droop. "It's still _you_. How I remember your face and your voice. 

"How long has it been?" Amélie asks slowly. Lena knows the number by heart. Has been counting them all this time. 

"Ten years, I think. Maybe more," is still her answer with feigned uncertainty. Amélie hums. From Lena's face, her hand goes to the chronal accelerator. She covers the light with her palm, blue leaking through the gaps of her fingers, dim and feeble like night lights. Lena watches her face go from fascinated to thoughtful. They say no more after. 

Gérard stirs them from their silence with the announcement that he's set the table. Grinning, Amélie professes, "I hope your favorites haven't changed because I prepared this especially for you." 

A lot of things... haven't changed, Lena supposes. 

 

* * *

 

Lena doesn't ask questions in the end. 

She doesn't ask them because things are well now, from the way Amélie speaks so easily to her to how she smiles, laughs,  _acts_ like there isn't a blank gap in the years of their friendship. Lena doesn't ask, because this is too  _good_ to ruin. She doesn't want to lose _this_ again. 

Amélie touches her as easily as she speaks to her, too. A light stroke here, a hold around her wrist to lead her somewhere there. Her fingers on Lena's scalp, curling around her hair, outwardly wondering what she could do with it. 

When Lena goes back to the watchpoint one day with her hair brushed back to obedience, none of the signature kinks, Jesse just about falls off his seat and Angela has to stop, turn around, and run after her to check if  _yeah, love, it's me, Lena._

It's unfair, really, how quickly she melts and molds herself around Amélie's hands like clay, how Amélie can make it happen without trying. 

It's unfair how Amélie just... ignores the things in the past, the years of silence. It's unfair, her power, how she could make Lena do the same. 

But Amélie invites Lena for lunch again, and Lena doesn't mind that anymore. 

Gérard calls her  _Lena_ now, settling into an unplanned, cautious kind of friendship with her. He's curious, Lena thinks, and more than once Lena has caught him trying to fish around for answers to questions of his own. Lena doesn't say much because Amélie seems to be doing the same. 

She wonders, though. Wonders why. 

 

Once, out on an assignment to intercept another Talon armaments transaction, Tracer saves Gérard's life. 

It's a no-brainer, really, how she could do that. They're comrades– _friends_ –and Tracer would have very readily done the same had it been any other teammate. 

It's odd, though, how when Tracer sees that scaffolding trembling, with Gérard underneath it and firing at Talon mercenaries, oblivious, focused, she goes and thinks of Amélie. 

Amélie and her smiles at Gérard, her fond tone with him, their dance that's a mess but beautiful to watch all the same. Amélie and how Gérard makes her happy. 

Tracer runs without hesitation, her mind screaming Amélie Amélie  _Amélie_ and throws herself at Gérard, knocking him off balance and out of the way. The scaffolding snaps and falls, and she couldn't blink away fast enough to end up completely unscathed. 

Gérard goes with her to the medbay. He looks at her, the same way he had always looked at her whenever he caught her staring too fondly at his wife, or spoke too softly... 

"Thank you, Lena," he says, brows furrowing, eyes deep and thoughtful. "I... don't know what would've happened if—" 

"Don't have to thank me, love," she cuts off, half-laughing, half-wincing. "We're comrades, yeah? A lot would be... lost if we lost you." 

Gérard nods, eyes narrowed, a quiet kind of dissatisfaction coming to his face. Lena looks away. 

 

* * *

 

Other than the watchpoint, Lena has no home to speak of. 

There  _is_ still the apartment in Westminster, untouched and unoccupied since Patrice passed away, but what use is a house if it's one with ghosts more than people? Jack left most of the watchpoint running before he went away, and Angela had tried to invite her to Germany just so Lena could have some company. Another denied invitation was Reinhardt's and Jesse's, who flew to Saudi Arabia to be with the Middle-Eastern Overwatch guard. Even Winston had a convention to attend in Iceland. 

It won't be her first Christmas alone, anyway. You get used to things when they happen many times enough. She's used to it now. 

She says as much when Gérard invites her to their apartment for Christmas. "S'alright, love, really. You don't have to worry," she insists. Gérard frowns, one eyebrow coming up. "And besides, it's family time, yeah? It'd make me feel bad, intruding." 

"Are you sure?" 

Not quite, though, no, but, "definitely. I'll see you after the holidays, yeah?" 

And Lena, having thought that's over, finds herself flinching when she opens the door of her quarters to Amélie's face this time. 

"H–how did you—" 

Amélie steps aside, lets Lena see Gérard standing ways away and waving with an impish smile. Lena feels rightly violated. "Oi! You know civillians aren't allowed at the watchpoint!" 

"He thought he could make an exception," Amélie supplies, tilting her head. "Just like how I thought  _you_ could make an exception." 

Lena swallows and scratches the back of her neck. "Really, Amélie, it's fine." 

"For you, but not for me." 

And she tries very, very hard not to duck her head at the sight of Amélie's squinting eyes. That's just pathetic to do. "I... look, it's okay, I'm okay, and, like I said, family time, so..." 

"It's Christmas eve, Lena." 

"And it's  _okay_ , Amélie." 

"It's not okay," Amélie maintains, and Lena's heart crushes her throat when it leaps up, leaves her mute when Amélie holds her by the hand. "But, Lena, if you really don't want to, then I won't force you." 

A moment trickles past before Lena can look Amélie in the face. Amélie is frowning, eyes warm and hopeful, two pools of brilliant, melted gold on her face. She tilts her head in question when Lena doesn't say anything. Lena chews her lip, shrugs. 

"I could... do with a little more forcing..." 

And when Amélie laughs, the sound of it like the morning light leaking through her curtains, Lena decides she won't need the forcing after all. 

 

They prepare food in mostly the French style. Dishes with names that threaten to break Lena's tongue that she just gives up on saying completely by the fourth time Gérard repeats the names to her. To her eyes, they just look like... white spaghetti seasoned with some herbs, and a steak (" _that's a_ steak _, Amé, don't get fancy with me,_ ") and some chicken Gérard's supposed to fetch, and bread, yep, fancy bread, and wine, of course. 

"Gér, put on some music before you leave, please?" Amélie calls to Gérard from the living room as she and Lena sit on the carpets, boxes of a disassembled tree and decorations scattered around them. Lena is going cross-eyed with the efforts of untangling a line of christmas lights. "The Debussy record—ah,  _merci._ " 

"Can't believe this is bloody plastic," Lena mutters, nose wrinkling with resentment at the parts of the plastic tree. "I mean,  _really,_ where's the bloody magic in  _that?_ " 

"The magic in it," Amélie says calmly, "will be in the decorations, which I'm sure you'll enjoy hanging." 

"Still, though, _plastic_ for crying out loud..." 

"You have seen the stairs, yes? Can you imagine carrying a tree up those?" 

"Gérard can do it! I've seen him lift things bigger than a tree!" 

Amélie groans, rolling her eyes to the heavens. "Lena, we have a plastic tree, and we're _putting up_ a plastic tree." 

"Why don't we have plastic food too, while we're at it? And fake wine—grape juice? _Then_ we'll see how you like it—" 

Lena squeaks when a fluff of synthetic leaves hit her in the face. 

 

Gérard returns to the scene of his wife straddling their guest, branches in their hands, one hitting the other on the face repeatedly with her branch. He clears his throat and Lena meant to look at him, but Amélie whacks her again. 

"Say plastic trees are fine!" 

"No!" Lena hisses, arms protecting her face, wriggling. She tries to get a hit in but Amélie is _fast_ , bloody hell. "Plastic trees shame Christmas and spit on the Christmas spirit!" 

"Say plastic trees are fine and the notion that Christmas should be celebrated with a real tree is a stupid social construct meant to shame people who have certain preferences and just cannot make the time!" 

Lena snorts, erupts in giggles that burst fully into a laugh because  _wow,_ _alright_ , and she forgets Gérard there when she hikes her knees up, sends Amélie toppling forward into her. They curl into each other's arms and laugh. 

" _Say—_ "

"Alright, love, _alright_ , plastic trees are fine!" 

"Good," Amélie laughs, pushing herself up to sit—still on Lena's stomach, Lena remembers with a shot of warm dizziness—and turns to look at Gérard. "Mm?" 

Lena looks too, something in her belly stirring when Gérard looks at her in  _that way_ he does in these situations. She looks elsewhere, swallowing. "I've brought the chicken. Will you need help with?..." 

"Ah, no, I have it." Amélie gets up. Lena gets up with her. "Help with the tree though, please?" 

Gérard nods. Amélie drifts away and into the kitchen. Lena determinedly avoids looking at him as he lowers himself to sit next to her. She returns to her task of untangling the lights. Gérard pulls a box of tree parts toward him and starts to go through it. 

They're quiet. Piano music plays in the distance, Amélie hums along in the kitchen, and the two of them are just  _quiet._

Lena tries clearing her throat to rid the air of the awkward. When that's doesn't work, "listen, Gér..." 

"We bought this four years ago, before we were even married," Gérard interrupts, willfully keeping his eyes down. "This is the first time it's coming out of the box." 

Lena stops, raises her brows at Gérard, and decides to go with that flow of conversation because it's safer. "No kidding, mate?" 

Gérard nods his head with a shrug like  _I know_ and fishes the stand from the bottom of the box. He turns it over in his hands. "Well, that's how it is when you're busy. Amélie with the theater, me with the GIGN. People love to go out and see shows on Christmas and crime just doesn't quit." He sets the stand down and digs some more into the box. "I'm surprised Overwatch has holidays off." 

"Ain't like anyone can just break into the watchpoint with Athena there." Lena shrugs. "And we're all technically on call. So Jack thinks it's no problem. And... y'know, he thinks it's important. Being with family on the holidays." 

The last part is said in a whisper. Lena feels Gérard's eyes on her, but she doesn't look. 

"Lena," Gérard says at length. Lena hums. "If something were to happen, just, if _something_ , I could count on you to watch over Amélie, couldn't I?" 

Lena's brows go low on her face. She looks at Gérard now. "What are you saying?" 

"There's no one else I'd trust." 

"But what are you saying? Will something happen, is what I'm asking." 

"Just... in case," Gérard breathes. His eyes are soft, pleading, dark like wet earth, lips a line on his face. "She is the world to me, Lena, and I'd like for her to be safe. Always." 

Lena can only nod, throat tight and chest heavy. She watches Gérard's face relax and light up in a smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners, breath long when he exhales. She wonders what's on his mind, leaving Lena with a job like that. She wonders if it's _right_ to take a job like that. "Thank you, Lena." 

 

They give her the guest room, a small bedroom with the same colors, the same styles in furniture as the rest of the house and a window with a view of the wet street below. Lena can see a quaint little flower shop directly across from their building. 

Amélie and Gérard have gone to bed nearly two hours ago. It's Christmas morning now, technically, and Lena isn't feeling very merry, sitting on the windowsill alone and watching the rain fall. Her light is on, her door is open, and her forehead is cold on the glass of the window. She can't sleep. 

She wants to tell herself it's the alienation of being in another house, or just leftover energy from the dinner they had, the movie they watched, the talks they shared among the three of them. But she knows she just can't fall asleep, not like this, not without a night light. Not in the dark. 

There are ghosts in the dark. Ghosts that scream, that cry, that die in explosions and gunfire and even in sleep. Ghosts that pull her back and rip her until she's in pieces, until she's everywhere, trapped and lost and  _gone._

She tap-taps her finger on the window, breathing on the glass. Someone knock-knocks on the door. 

"I went for some water and saw your light on," Amélie explains, soft like fingers on sheets, leaning on the doorjamb. She's in her night clothes, some silk pyjamas and the matching shirt. "Is everything okay?" 

Lena nods her head, offers a smile that she hopes is halfway convincing. "Mhm. Just having trouble sleeping, is all." 

"What's wrong?" 

"It just... happens, sometimes," she says, not very willing to mention night lights and ghosts and _nightmares_. "I'm fine, Amé, go back to bed." 

Amélie hums like she's considering it, but eventually crosses the room to sit with Lena on the sill. Lena pulls her knees closer to her chest to give Amélie leg room. Amélie lifts her feet to the sill and their toes touch. She's warm. 

They watch the drizzle for a time and _this_ , this kind of company is so familiar it hurts, just a little. Hurts to not have had it the many times she needed it in the last few years. Lena keeps her mouth shut, doesn't let the thoughts go from her brain to her mouth.

Amélie hums suddenly like she remembers something. "Just behind that flower shop is my studio," she says, smiling, rapping a knuckle on the window. "I teach children, have I told you?" 

"Mm-mm," Lena answers. Wants to say they completely skipped the catching-up phase of the reunion in favor of pretending they never got separated to begin with. "Children?" 

Amélie hums. "Mm. _Children_. Like Patty did. Back at the orphanage." 

A lump forms in Lena's throat at the sudden mention of Patty and even just the orphanage at all. She's reminded of the pink elephant banging pots and pans in the room— _brilliant_ analogy—the blank gap in their time together, the years between the orphanage and the now. 

"I saw it in the news. The attack." 

Lena shrugs. "That was... some time ago," she mumbles. "Their mother adopted me, did I tell you already? It's their name I've got." 

If only Amélie had gotten her letters, she wouldn't looked so shocked. "Really?" 

"Mm. Patrice—ma—sent me to school. Gave me a headstart on the whole pilot career. I was in the air force for a while." Lena pauses, sees Amélie watching from the corner of her eye. "I was sent to... places and then... Cyprus. Yeah. That's where Overwatch got me from." 

Amélie's eyes flicker to the chronal accelerator briefly before focusing somewhere else. Of course she'd know that part. She'd know from Gérard. 

"Heard you had shows, though, you." Lena steers the subject. "Heard they were hits in the holidays." 

Amélie's smile is slow to spread. "Yes... In Birmingham, I was a soloist. When we moved to Paris," and here, she pauses, Lena sees she pauses too long, a sting coming to Lena's chest, "I got into  _Ballet de l'Opéra national de Paris_ "—she exaggerates the accent, tries to lighten the mood, sweep her momentary _faux pas_ under the rug—"and only made it to  _coryphée_ before I... had to leave everything and move here. 

"We met on one of my shows, you know? Gérard's mother had heart for ballet and brought him to one,  _one of mine,_ one spring day." 

Lena smiles because Amélie is smiling, but she couldn't hold it, so she looks at their toes, head down. "I'd like to see you dance some time." 

"You already have though, no? Not my best performances, but..." 

They laugh, and when Lena's hand wants to touch Amélie's knee, Lena lets it. "They were beautiful dances, love." 

Amélie's expression is gentle, head tilted, smiling warmly at Lena. "Of course you'd think so." 

"Because they are," comes the reflex, to which Amélie chuckles and Lena flushes. Lena squeezes Amélie's knee. 

 

When Lena tells Amélie she ought to go to bed, Amélie turns off the light and lingers on the doorway for a moment. Eventually, she closes the door. 

Lena is surprised, though, to hear her footsteps returning across the room. And then the bed dips with Amélie's weight, and Lena's heart is full with Amélie's presence. 

"I've missed you, Lena," Amélie says in the darkness, her hand finding Lena's. Lena squeezes, is careful not to let the desperation show through. She exhales, stares into the space in the darkness where Amélie's face is. 

"I missed you too, Amélie." 

Lena doesn't let go of Amélie's hand. She sleeps without a night light for the first time in years. She is safe in the dark for one night. 

Oh, to fall in love, through the silence and the distance and the years. To fall in love the way she has. 

 

* * *

 

When Lena decides to visit the Lacroix home one evening, it's because today marks the first week of Gérard's time in South Africa on an assignment with Jack and Jesse, and, well, someone has to check on Amélie. 

She doesn't knock anymore. Amélie just tells her off on it whenever she does, _mi casa es su casa_  and whatnot, and instead announces her presence by shouting Amélie's name upon entry. Now, the first thing she notices is the mess. There's a ripped bouquet next to the welcome mat with a card there signed by Gérard, and Amélie's heels and purse somewhere close by. 

"Amélie?" Lena calls out in alarm. She picks up the bouquet and cradles it to her chest. From the living room, Amélie answers,  _here,_ and Lena walks with caution and a wrinkle between her brows. 

Amélie is on the sofa. Quiet, curled, face turned away from the clutter of books on the coffee table. Haphazard, like she couldn't decide what to read and just kept taking whatever out with dissatisfaction. Lena sees two wine bottles on the end table closest to Amélie. One has been opened. 

"You alright there, Amé?" she ventures timidly. Amélie hums, wiggles more than nods her head. Lena fidgets. "Should I, um, should I go?" 

Amélie sighs, heavy and tired. "No, I—" she breathes, rasps, "no,  _chérie_ , stay. Forgive my..." She gestures to herself and the mess flippantly. 

When Lena doesn't move and just stands there like an idiot, Amélie sighs again and pats the space next to her. At least she tries to smile this time. Lena sits. She sets the ruined bouquet on the nearest couch and notices Amélie's eyes follow it blankly. 

"...There an occasion, love?" she mumbles, treading lightly. Amélie finds the question funny for whatever reason. 

"Gérard and I were married three years ago today," she supplies monotonously. She sniffs, takes the open wine bottle and looks at it. "Our third anniversary we aren't together." 

Lena doesn't know what to say to that. Which hardly matters, because Amélie continues after a drink straight from the wine bottle. "He's known about the assignment since Christmas. And he only chose to tell me a week ago." Lena sees Amélie's jaw flex, grow hard with teeth gritting in her mouth. She swallows, looks at her hands. "He promised me, you know, that we would be together this time. That he'd make up for the last two years." 

Lena doesn't talk still. Amélie asks her, straight up, "did you know about it?" and when she looks up with a strained, telling expression, and Amélie's face gets angry, almost, and accusing, it _hurts_. 

"I... thought he'd tell you, it wasn't my place to... I mean, I never thought to..." 

Lena trails off. Amélie's face softens and her mouth wobbles, eyes getting glassy. "I thought he'd tell me, too." 

Lena watches Amélie empty the first bottle in silence. When Amélie opens the second, she offers her hand. Amélie hands it over without looking. Lena drinks with her. She knows the process of drinking the loneliness away well enough. She fetches the third and fourth bottles from the kitchen herself. 

"Happy anniversary, love," she murmurs. And Amélie laughs, voice clogged and eyes wet. Lena lets her fall against her. 

 

They couldn't finish the fourth bottle in the end. Lena carries Amélie to the bedroom, hers and Gérard's bedroom, and places her on the bed like one would a doll, or a child, or a _lover_. Amélie's eyes are closed but she mumbles, keeps saying Lena's name and thanking her and Lena only chuckles. 

Lena tugs off the ponytail, thick, dark hair spreading on the sheets like spilled oil on the ocean. She thinks of darkness, of secrets, of dangers in oiled waters. Amélie does her best to lift herself when Lena moves to remove her sweater. Lena sees the shirt underneath, the splice of brown skin under the lifted hems and averts her eyes, setting the sweater aside. 

She had meant to step out, fetch Amélie some water and properly put her to bed, but Amélie whispers her name and holds her hand, and her mouth is warm. Warm and wet on Lena's own, and Lena tastes wine and _Amélie_ , pure and hot and pricking on her tongue like spice. Like live fire. 

Amélie pulls her and Lena whimpers, the longing bone deep and crippling and  _painful_ , and for a moment she thinks she'll be crushed under the weight of it. 

But then Amélie whispers against her mouth,  _Gér, Gérard,_ and Lena  _wants_ to die now, tears breaking free from her eyes and falling in currents down her face. Lena disconnects the two of them, gasps for air, lets herself fall to her knees on the bedside and sobs into the sheets. 

Lena cries, hand still on Amélie's as Amélie drifts off to sleep. 

To fall in love, through the absence, and the pain, and the things she could never say. 

Oh, _woe_ , to fall in love the way she has. 

 

* * *

 

Lena requests Jack for a leave after an assignment in Shanghai. Jack doesn't ask questions—knows enough, at this point, Lena does this on the same date every year—and books the flight himself. It's Jesse who drives her to the airport with Angela on Angela's own insistence, having packed her own carry-on bag for Lena to bring. There's fruit in there, and protein bars, and water, things Lena laughs at with fondness and earns her a good slapping on the arm. 

"Do you want us to pick you up when you get back?" Angela asks despite already knowing the answer. Lena only shakes her head. 

"Safe flight, Lena." 

"We'll be seein' ya, doll." 

Lena doesn't stay in Patrice's apartment whenever she comes to Westminster. Too empty, she thinks, too much room for ghosts to roam and wander. Jack books her into hotels, too, anyway, and they're always the small, quiet ones, low profile and impersonal, just the way she likes it. It's a different hotel each time. Different receptionists squinting their eyes at her oversized bomber jacket and blank expression. She doesn't mind them. 

It's fittingly overcast when she gets to the cemetery. Clouds heavy and skies gray, wind strong enough to mess up her hair and rattle the leaves on the trees around her. No one else is on the grounds other then her and a few squirrels skittering about. She counts the headstones as she goes, reciting names and dates of death. It calms her, if only a little. 

When she gets there, to the four plots and headstones with the names  _Oxton,_ she feels her calm vanish and the grief get so  _fierce_ she just plops down in front of them and shudders, controlling her breathing. 

"Ma," she greets. Moist settles on her upper lip, on her cheeks, under her eyes. She smushes her hands down her face carelessly. "Patty. Patrick. Mr Oxton." 

She stays there until nightfall. 

 

Amélie is at the lobby when Lena arrives to the watchpoint. Gérard is with her, and Angela and Winston, and they stop their chatting as she walks in. Lena avoids looking at Amélie—too much pain now, on the surface, gaping and bubbling—but she smiles in Amélie's general direction and Gérard's. 

"Nice trip back?" Winston asks. Lena shrugs. 

"As nice as Economy can get," she answers. She unslings the carry-on and hands it to Angela, grinning. "Thanks, love. You  _really_ went all the way with the bananas this time, didn't you?" 

"You need your potassium, Lena," Angela huffs. She smiles but it's small, solemn, knowing. "Do you need anything from the medbay?" 

Sleeping pills, she means. Antidepressants, relaxers. Lena shakes her head. "I'll manage, love, thanks." 

"Can I have your bag?" Amélie asks, coming up between Winston and Angela. Angela raises her brows. "I could carry it. You look tired,  _chérie._ " 

Angela frowns and Winston makes a surprised sound, frowning similarly. "I'm sorry, Mrs Lacroix, but civillians aren't allowed in—" 

"Can we make an exception, Winston love?" Lena asks. She's out of energy, quite frankly. Just let it happen. No need to argue. Winston makes another surprised sound. "Just for a while. Bag in and she'll be out." 

Amélie looks to Winston, Winston to Angela. He eventually relents, shrugging. Amélie nods to Gérard. "I'll only be a while, Gér." 

Lena doesn't need to look to know Gérard is staring. 

She walks, two brisk strides before Amélie. Her body is cold, her chest tight and stinging. Amélie doesn't remember it, what happened, what Lena has tried very hard to forget, so why does she feel so... heavy? 

Maybe, a part of her thinks, it's because Amélie doesn't remember that she's feeling that way. Maybe she doesn't really want to forget. 

She pushes that part of her away, to the back of her mind. 

She opens the door to her quarters with her ID card and walks in. The lights automatically turn on. It's a mess in there. Bed unmade, clothes sticking out of the dresser and on the floor, dirty laundry dumped on a chair. Papers on the desk, blinds half-drawn, tiny picture frames on an end table flipped and scattered. Accelerator parts peeking out from under the bed. Her bracers are on an unmade pile on the pillows. 

At any other time, she'd be embarrassed bringing Amélie here but right now, she can't bring herself to care. This is the life she's lived, someone whispers in her head. This is the life Amélie missed. Let her see. 

The doors slide closed and Lena hears her bag set down, gently, behind her, and then Amélie's uncertain footfalls. 

"Thanks, love," she croaks. She hears Amélie hum. 

"Are you alright, Lena?" 

"Mm. Just tired from the trip is all. I'll be in top shape in the morning." 

"I was worried about you," Amélie says. "Would you like to come with us to dinner tonight? We're trying out an Asian restaurant on Upper Town." She pauses, seems to wait for Lena to speak, which Lena doesn't. "I... really did worry about you, you know, I had to find out from Gérard where you've gone..." 

And something about all that, about  _everything_ balling up together into one, huge, horrible  _shite,_ Amélie's presence and her voice and her tone, and Westminster and its weather and the tombstones, and Gérard's eyes, and the mess of her own room, and the night with four bottles of wine and how Amélie  _doesn't remember,_ and the choking pain in Lena's chest and the bloody  _elephant_ in the room they've been ignoring since _day one—_

Just pushes her. Amélie, in the room, standing there, mildly accusing, asking where Lena's gone, pushes her. 

"I had to find out from Gérard where you've gone, too," she grounds out, pain in her chest and her throat and now, on her mouth. "You had me worried, too." 

Amélie is quiet. Lena turns to face her and sees her wide-eyed, frozen. She can see the apology forming in Amélie's eyes and coming to her mouth. Something about that makes Lena so inexplicably  _angry._

She doesn't need apologies. She  _deserves_ more than those. 

"Do you know how many letters I tried sending to you? How many got sent back?" She shakes now. Absolutely _quaking_ on her feet. "Even  _I_ don't know anymore. I've written so many I've lost bloody count!" 

"Lena—" 

" _No,_ " Lena hisses, voice hard and wet. "I had to go through everything on my own. I've lost people. I've seen people die. I've had my home taken  _twice!_ " she roars. Amélie flinches, takes a step back. "And you know? I thought I lost you, too. I thought, you wouldn't do that to me, you wouldn't abandon me, you wouldn't leave me, not you, not ever,  _and I thought you were gone!_ " 

Lena can't breathe. She sniffles, wipes her face down with her palms, and shuts her eyes.

"Lena, I—" 

"I was so scared when I saw you again. So scared to find out _why_ you just—you talked so bloody much about kindness," Lena cuts off, scowling, heartbeat rushing in her ears and a pounding in her head, her throat. "But you couldn't even spare me it to tell me a proper good bye." 

Amélie closes her eyes and Lena sees her face crumple, scrunch with so much shame and pain and regret and she doesn't  _want_ these, what she wants is—" _where did you go?!_ " she shouts. 

" _I lived!_ " Amélie cries hoarsely, tears trailing down her cheeks. "I lived, Lena! I—" She pauses, breathes, tries to compose herself. "I didn't want to be stuck in the past forever! I didn't want to be  _that_ orphan forever! I didn't want to keep on feeling that sadness _forever_! I moved on and _I lived!_ " 

Lena lets that sink in, burrow through skin and bone, fester in her bloodstream and go to her heart. She lets herself feel it. 

" _Lena—_ Lena, I thought...—but when I saw you, I—I'm  _sorry,_ _I'm so sorry,_ it was selfish, and—just, I shouldn't have—" 

" _Fuck you,_ " Lena spits, and Amélie's face is so  _hurt_ Lena feels her own hurt intensify, twist, rip her apart. " _Fuck you,_ Amélie." 

"Lena, _please—_ " 

"Leave. Leave right now— _go!_ " 

Amélie sniffles. She looks down and wipes her face with her sleeves. The door opens when she approaches. It slides shut behind her. 

Lena crumples. She sits on the floor with her knees to her chest, heartbeat still pounding in her ears. She sits in the ruins of her life. 

 

* * *

 

Gérard knocks on her door one day, weeks later. He's frowning, pleading with his eyes and his mouth, hand tight on the doorway. 

"Please, Lena," he whispers. "Just come see her. She hasn't come out of the apartment in  _weeks_ and— _and—_ I don't know what's happened, but please,  _please,_ just come visit—" 

"I'm sorry, Gérard—" 

"I'll do anything," he begs. Lena watches his jaw tremble, his eyes widen, the browns of them ripple with emotion and love, so much _love_. 

Oh, to fall in love. 

She turns away and lets the door slide closed between them. 

 

* * *

 

Amélie disappears. 

She left, the neighbors said. Went out one afternoon in her coat and boots and with her purse. She had flowers, they said. 

She was on her way to the watchpoint, the florist she bought the flowers from said. Had the card addressed to someone named _Lena_ , filled up with an  _I'm sorry_ and signed,  _Amélie._

 

* * *

 

Lena is at the front line of every search party. She goes back and forth between the local police station and the watchpoint, waiting for the updates, signing herself up for each scheduled search. 

She avoids Gérard because this is her fault,  _her fault,_ those were her flowers, that was her name on the card, and she couldn't stand to look at him and see the bags under his eyes and the mess of his stubble and hair, untrimmed and unkempt, the ruffle of his clothes and the  _despair—_

She searches and searches and  _searches_ until morning is night and night is morning. She sleeps on the lobby of the watchpoint or the police station, whichever of the two she happens to be in when exhaustion catches up. 

She's on her feet again when she wakes. She doesn't stop searching. 

 

* * *

 

"You _can't_ just say there's nowhere else, Jack!" 

"There's nowhere else to search, Lena! It's been months! She could be out of the country! She could be—" Jack stops himself, swallows the next word down and clamps his hands, hard, on the edges of his desk. "There's nothing more we could do!" 

"That's not true and _you know it!_ " Lena roars, slamming a fist on the desk. She exhales through her teeth, feels the tears start to come and struggles to stop them. "Then let's go out of the country! This could be Talon's doing—human trafficking! She could be–she could be anywhere, trapped and afraid and alone and— _a_ _nd—_ " 

"We can't just—" 

"Jack,  _please,_ " she sobs, falling to her knees, hands clawing on the desk. She bangs her forehead on the wood. "We have to find her. We have to save her. She could be _hurt_ , Jack, I need to find her..." 

Jack comes to her side and lifts her up, not speaking. He tucks her head under his chin and lets her tears soak the collar of his shirt. 

 

* * *

 

Amélie is gone a year. 

Gérard stopped coming to the watchpoint five months ago. 

Lena hasn't stopped looking. 

 

* * *

 

Lena runs to the hospital as soon as she finds out. 

Found in an alley on Main Street, unconscious and barely alive. Still wearing the clothes she was a year ago. Skin deathly pale. Lips dry. Heartbeat slow, deep, almost not there. Pulse near gone. Physically unharmed, for the most part. 

She's the first to visit. Overwatch agent privileges grant her entry to the room and when she sees Amélie, skin more ashen than brown and eyes unblinking on the ceiling, she feels her heart clench with dread and fear and  _guilt—_

"Amélie?" she treads, and Amélie turns her head to look at her. There is no recognition in her eyes. There is  _nothing_ on her face at all. "Amélie, how do you feel?" 

Amélie merely blinks. Lena couldn't believe herself when she has to say, "it's me, Lena." 

Amélie's eyebrows lower but other than that, nothing. Lena's brain whirs— _was it Talon? What did they do to you? What happened to you?_

_It's me, don't you recognize me?_

Gérard arrives minutes after Lena came in. He pushes past Lena, breathing hard, and collapses to his knees at the bedside. Lena sees his hands shaking as he takes Amélie's to kiss feverishly, tears falling freely down his face. 

"Amélie,  _oh, Amé..._ " 

"Gérard," Amélie croaks, wincing with difficulty. "Gér..." 

"Yes?  _Yes?_ It's me, Amé, what is it?" 

Gérard gets to his feet, bends to clutch Amélie's face. Amélie looks tiredly at him and closes her eyes. "Let's go home." 

"Yes, Amé, we will, I'll take you home, I'll..." 

Lena turns around to leave. She closes the door behind her. 


	4. her

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fair warning: another lena-centric chapter, and the emily/lena tag comes to play here. 
> 
> translations of other languages at the bottom. they're not a lot and are just basic phrases, so no need to rush knowing what they mean.

_I can push and pull_  
_Her_

 _If you're willing to wait for the love of your life_  
_Please wait by the line_

*** 

 

Amélie vanishes. 

In her wake she leaves a corpse, face purple and skin sheened gray with death. The cord is still around Gérard's neck when a cadet comes knocking to check on him following three missed check-ins. It's been pressed down hard enough to burrow into the skin of his neck, lined with blood and cemented with crusty flesh. 

Amélie might be dead, too, they said. They found her blood on the scene. They saw signs of a long struggle. 

The sendoff and burial were simple, or so Lena is said when she comes home from a two-month mission in the Swiss Alps. Angela had stopped her from leaving Bern early after they were sent the transmission a month ago but now they're home, and the mission is done, and she won't let even Overwatch security stop her from getting her ass to the Lacroix apartment to see for herself. 

She knees a cadet on the chest and elbows another on the side of the head. Angela inserts herself in the fray and grabs Lena by the arm, very barely dodging a lashing fist. Lena's baggages clatter, explode open in a mess of fabric and other personal effects. Radios chatter for additional manpower. " _Lena, calm down!_ " cries Angela and Lena shakes her head, accelerator still beeping its recharge, heart pounding under the steel. Angela pushes her, subdues her with the ground and her knees. 

The runway's concrete scratches Lena's cheek and the lining of her accelerator bites into her neck. She squirms still, breathless, helpless. "Ange, let me go!" 

" _No._ You will be calm and you will report to Jack. You will  _breathe,_ Lena." 

"Kinda hard to do that with the way you're pinning me down, love," Lena bites out with unintended venom. She can't see Angela's face, but Angela's grip loosens a tad. "Just let me go, I  _need_ to go, I need to see!" 

"And what good will seeing do, mm?" Angela challenges behind her ear. Hers is the voice of strength in the face of grief. Gerard was her friend, too. Amélie was kind to her, too. She knew them enough and the stricture of her fingers shakes. 

Lena doesn't have a good answer so she struggles, growls epithets through her teeth. She tastes dust and dirt and the heat of anger on her tongue when she's pulled up to her feet and held in place. 

Jack's boots are planted firmly on the ground. Jack's eyes are burning into her face. He squares his shoulders, his head blocking the sun. Lena frowns in his shadow and body heat. "Problem, Agent Oxton?" 

"I need to see, Jack. I need to see for myself. I need to know how it looks." 

"Don't you have the manners to report to your superior about your mission first?" 

Lena's ears burn. She looks down and snatches her arms from whoever's holding them, cheek throbbing and eyes stinging. Security pick up scattered belongings and thrown baggages to arrange in an orderly pile. All the while, Jack stares Lena down. 

Lena's accelerator beeps a happy beep of full charge. She shifts, but stays where she is. 

"I want a full report on my desk first thing tomorrow," Jack rasps at length. "I'll accept no excuses." To Angela, "will you be going with her?" 

Lena doesn't see the response, but when Jack snaps for her to _get out of his sight_  Angela's footfalls follow, even rushing when Lena's started to blink forward with her sprints. An Overwatch service car is waiting out front and Lena all but throws herself into the backseat with Angela lagging behind. 

"Ange," Lena starts as the vehicles does. Angela stops her with a raised hand. 

"I understand," she says. They say nothing for the rest of the drive. 

They say nothing still as they tear through the police yellow tapes together and walk inside what used to be the Lacroix apartment. Angela lingers at the doorway but Lena,  _Lena,_ she bounds right in because that's what Amélie told her, isn't it? No need to knock. No need to hesitate. My home is your home. She has to take a moment to let her heart unclench. 

The picture frames of once perfect symmetry are twisted to skewed angles on the walls. Books litter the carpets. Amélie's grand bookshelf is a display of shadows and gaps like missing teeth. She can't smell Amélie's tea nor Gérard's perfume, only dust and death. 

In the bedroom, the chalk outline where Gérard's body was found is smeared but still distinguishible. He was on his side on the floor. The sheets fell with him, whiplashed and tangled like stormy seas, hiked and stretched sidelong in his struggle. The tip of one corner is extended toward the doorway, reaching desperately for Lena's feet. 

Lena walks away from it. 

 

Jack has the Lacroixes' possessions disposed of if not kept in the Overwatch repository in Switzerland. Gérard's firearm, his suit, his thick and thicker yet volumes of outdated intel on Talon and its activities all go overseas.

The unimportant things are sent to disposal–to surviving family or, in the case of Amélie, charity or the dumps. Gérard's favorite tin of cookies, Amélie's tea boxes and coffee beans, their extensive wine collection they've been keeping locked away in the corner cupboard. 

Jack allows Lena custody of the several things under  _unimportant,_ at least. Gérard's favorite necktie, the periwinkle one with the football prints. His modest set of vintage action movies. His watch with the cracked face owing to an accident one day in the shooting range. 

Amélie's entire collection of books. All her music records. Her posh, mahogany-finish jewelry box. 

Their lousy, plastic Christmas tree. 

All of these are stored away except for the Christmas tree. Lena sets the tree up in her quarters, in the lonely quiet of the watchpoint and the harrowed thrum of her soul and heartbeat. 

She celebrates Christmas alone, again. Rain falls outside. 

 

* * *

 

Tracer goes on every assignment she could. She eliminates all the bad guys she could. She saves as much lives as she could. 

She tries to make up for everything as much as she could. 

 

* * *

 

Lena searches whenever she's able. 

In Polokwane, sweat gathered on the collar of her jacket and the sun burning the back of her neck, she squints behind her sunglasses and glosses over the front page of a displayed newspaper on a stall. _Ten_ _dead, twelve wounded in Johannesburg robbery._ An armaments warehouse was raided in the dead of the night and the security team on the scene was incapacitated. A mention of explosives. Civillians caught in the blast. 

The old woman manning the stall whacks the aforementioned newspaper with a hand fan and Lena flinches. She reels back. The stall owner brandishes her fan like a weapon and makes a swiping motion at Lena. Her fluid Sepedi chatter makes Lena's mouth work and brain grind. 

" _Boeletša, hle_ ," Lena replies apologetically in what she's sure is a terrible accent. The old woman frowns. The deep chocolate of her skin is flecked with webs of shadows and sunlight both and they shudder on her face when she tilts her head. 

"No buy, no read," she says fiercely. 

"Sorry," Lena murmurs. One exchange of rands and newspaper later and the old woman looks friendlier already. "Riot in Johannesburg, huh?" 

"No shortage of evil," the old woman agrees after some thought. "The same things all over the world. The news said terrorist group." 

This, Lena already knew. It's why she's here after all. 

"They'll get what's coming to them," she replies. 

The old woman goes  _ha_ and her droopy cheeks shudder. "Soon, I hope." She narrows her eyes at Lena now, takes note of her oversized bomber jacket and sweat-wet neck. "You a tourist?" 

"No." Lena thinks. "Traveller. Yeah. Visitor. Looking for someone." 

"Looking for who?" 

The newspaper is bunched into a haphazard roll and stuffed underneath one arm. Lena produces a photo from the pocket of her jacket, smooths out the creases as best as she could before presenting it. 

"She's my friend," she supplies. The words roll practiced off her tongue, mouth numbed by the many times she's already had to say this. "She went missing about six months ago. Disappeared from her flat." 

The old woman's wrinkles deepen with concentration. Amélie's face from almost two years ago stares at her, winning smile, bright eyes, turtleneck as black as her hair. Lena isn't at all surprised when the old woman shakes her head. 

"Have you tried the police station?" the old woman asks. Lena gives a sad smile in response and tucks the photo back in her pocket. The old woman must understand enough because she nods slowly. 

"She will turn up. Those lost often do in the end." 

Lena's tongue ends up empty. Which hardly matters, because a peculiar shine of light blooms above the woman's head and blinks, twitches, disappears with meaning. She glances over her shoulder and spies the shape of a waiting figure on one roof. Conversation's over now. 

"Thanks for the paper." As an afterthought, said as best as she could: " _gabotse. Eba le letšatši le lebotse._ " 

" _Mahlatse!_ " the old woman calls after her as she goes. 

Ana Amari meets her in a shadowed alley in the airconditioned comfort of an unmarked sedan. Lena gets into the passenger side quietly and immediately sheds her jacket, leaning into the cool breath of the nearest aircon vent, eyes fluttering half-closed. 

"Winston was looking for you," Ana starts when Lena shows no intention to. Lena shrugs. 

"I told him I was going out." 

"For thirty minutes. It's been two hours." 

 _Lost track of time_ seems too ironic of an answer so Lena settles with, "sorry." 

The car rumbles forward with the bumps of uneven concrete. Shadows peel back on the dashboard and are replaced by sunlight, fierce and bright. Ana slides her sunglasses on. 

"You left your comm, too," she says with mild accusation. Her glance is sidelong, heavy. 

"I forgot it." 

"Of all the things to forget?" 

Lena shrugs and looks out the window. Ana makes a small humming sound. 

"Have you checked with the local police force?" Ana asks knowingly. Lena sucks a quiet breath through her teeth. 

"Yeah," she answers quietly. She balls her hands at her side. 

"You know she might be dead _._ " 

" _Might be_ isn't  _is._ " 

"But it _could_ be. You missed the briefing. Jack has given you  _three_ warnings on mission deviation," Ana provides with a hard edge. "Do _not_ count on a fourth. It will be a suspension next." 

"If it was someone dear to  _you,_ you wouldn't give up hope, too, Ana." 

At this, Ana's head turns and the car slows. Lena doesn't look at her. She has a daughter at home, she'd told Lena once. A daughter so dear to her she's kept the little one as far away as she could from her job, her lifestyle. As far away from  _her_ as she could. 

"Hope is sometimes a treacherous thing," Ana murmurs. "It builds us up. Remember that the tallest structures create the biggest ruins, Lena." 

The sun burns, blazing. Lena's insides feel cold. 

 

In Sandton, Overwatch ambushes Talon. 

Maude Street is lit with the bursts of explosions, scalding plasma, and wild electricity. Local police force and fire protection are herding civillians as far away from the area as they could.

Talon has planned to set off the bombs the very next day during the annual UN gala as provided by intel. Winston is with Jesse and Torbjörn inside the Sandton Convention Centre, eliminating hostiles and removing all explosives possibly planted on the scene. Tracer is working with Ana on boundary control: _no civillians beyond this point, no hostiles must pass through here._

Ana has taken to the skies with her sniper rifle. She is invisibility, taking down enemies from where she knows she can't be reached. Tracer is trying hard not to get seriously injured because Ana may have bullets that heal, but those  _still_ hurt. 

" _Tracer, on your left!_ " 

Tracer whips around, pulse pistols up and firing. The Talon-marked jeep revs its engine and charges at her with reckless abandon. She blinks forward, left, around it, and fires until it goes up in flames and smoke. When it explodes, Tracer laughs, " _ha!_ " 

" _Well done,_ habibti _._ " 

"Thanks, _thank you_ , I'll be here all night." She would salute if she knew just where the hell Ana is. "How we doing on your end, Winston?" 

" _Enemies're_ _turnin' tail but we don't have all the bombs yet!_ " It's Jesse who answers breathlessly. " _Someone call in the damn army!_ " 

" _They're on their way, boy, but they might not make it in time,_ " Torbjörn grunts. 

Winston's voice comes in raspy on the line. " _Talon has rigged the explosives to premature detonation. They may go off at any time within the next five minutes. We've only found two charges._ " 

"Need help, love?" Tracer asks. In the background, Jesse cries for the army again and Torbjörn growls,  _stop being a big baby and move!_

" _No, Tracer, stay where you are! You and Anna keep watch for reinforcements. We'll handle this!_ " 

" _Speaking of,_ " Ana hisses. 

Right on cue, the shape of an aircraft forms on the sky, sleek, black,  _fast,_ headed right for the Convention Centre with purpose. Tracer hears Ana mutter an expletive and let loose six hopeless shots in quick succession as soon as the aircraft is big enough, _close_ enough on the sky. 

"Winston love, our problems aren't getting any smaller," Tracer hisses. Winston sucks in a furious breath. 

" _Be careful, both of you!_ " 

"Ana!" Tracer lowers herself to a squat and primes her accelerator. It hums, beeps, vibrates its own pulse against her hammering heart. "I'm going up to it! Be a darling and make sure it doesn't drop anything funny on me, will you?" 

" _What are you planning?_ " 

"Something," Tracer murmurs. A mechanism on the back of the accelerator clicks and hisses steam. A blue light peeks through the opened slit, blinks, grows brighter, bathes Tracer's back with an uncomfortable warmth. Ana, wherever she is, must see the pulse bomb engage because she doesn't ask further. 

The accelerator works in quick blinks. Tracer scales the Convention Centre in precarious leaps: wrong footing has her slipping once and grazing her knee to Ana's surprised hiss. Upward is always harder than forward. The irony of the thought isn't lost on Tracer. 

The Talon aircraft overhead sways, hovers in place, gusts of wind making Tracer's jaw tighten and pace slow. The hatch opens to darkness and the glint of seven red lights in formation glare at Tracer from within. Curiosity has her stopping. 

An eighth one joins it, smaller, a dot in comparison to the first seven. It traces the wall in a swooping arc before resting between her eyes. Realization has her scrambling away. 

"Shooter!" she cries as she wheels wildly to the side. Ana yells expletives into the comms. 

The shot cuts through the aircraft's gusts and a miniature crater forms on the concrete where Tracer's head was. Tracer blinks in a slanting path, limbs flailing and fingertips numbed with force and friction. A chancing glance up gives her another view of those glowing red lights, following her like eyes. 

"Ana!" she growls, and Ana's grunt fades seamlessly into bursts of gunfire. 

The red lights twitch, move to the side in hiding. Sparks flash on the steel of the aircraft where Ana's bullets clash. The red lights resurface with a return shot, _just one_ , and Ana shrieks sharply into the comms. 

"Ana!" Tracer sputters in alarm. 

" _Just a scratch, Tracer. Keep going!_ " 

Tracer curses and leaps upward. Her accelerator scratches the wall, sparks, dents on concrete. Air leaves her mouth in quick gasps. She grabs onto the ledge, kicks with both feet, launches to the air in a jerk of gold and blue. She pulls the pulse bomb free and hurls it at the aircraft with a strangled shout. 

The red lights in the Talon hovercraft shift to face her. The gleam of a firearm's nozzle accompanies the movement. 

What happens next, Tracer's brain is only able to catch in snapshots. A gunshot in the wind. The pulse bomb midair. Her accelerator beeping. An explosion: the pulse bomb shot right out of the air, the blazing colors of flames spreading on the space before her and reaching for her outstretched hand. She's thrown back, the world a flurry of sky-concrete-land and her brain rattles like drums to the whistle in her ears. 

Ana shouts. Tracer is falling,  _falling,_ and then she's _not_ , caught by thick, furry arms, a deep grunt tickling the skin of her temple. She streaks across the street with Winston's voice on the side of her head. 

Someone howls  _it's the bombs,_ _get back_ followed by a bigger bang of explosion. Tracer dizzily turns her head from behind Winston's arm to see the Sandton Convention Centre start to collapse. In the distance, the Talon aircraft has made its escape. 

 

* * *

 

" _... an unfortunate result of the clash. We at Overwatch give our sincerest apologies—_ " 

" _Cmdr Morrison, how do you respond to the people who say Overwatch is the reason for these most recent terrorist attacks in South Africa?_ " 

" _State leaders declare Overwatch should be held responsible for the destruction resulting from your operations! Any comments, commander?_ " 

" _Commander! There have been leaks of an all-covert operations team functioning outside Overwatch's radar. How true are these claims?_ " 

On the screen, Jack's face twitches but otherwise stays dour. He is the heroes' dream crumbling at their feet. The camera pans to the crowd behind the line of Overwatch security staff: people holding up signs and yelling protests. Lena sees her face on one of the placards, crossed out with red paint and rightly vandalized. She thinks of that day of the photoshoot–Winston's uncertain poses, Angela's charming smile, Jack's flaxen hair shining with product, herself, giving her famous salute–and hits the power button on the remote. 

On the next couch, Angela shifts. She stands up, smooths down her shirt, and gathers her coat from the backrest. "Back to work," she announces tonelessly. Torbjörn goes quietly. Ana does, too, leaving her cup of tea untouched on the coffee table. Reinhardt at least finishes his. 

Lena doesn't leave the lounging room until Athena's voice comes through on the speakers with announcements of Winston's summons. " _Chronal accelerator maintenance,_ " she sees fit to supply when Lena ignores her. 

Lena nods to no one. She looks at the TV, at her sallow reflection on the screen, her throat a cold stranglehold of anguish. She gets up. 

 

* * *

 

People hate them. 

They save King's Row and save more lives still, and Jack has to face the Prime Minister's fury over Overwatch's borderline  _unlawful_ intercession. People gather outside the watchpoint and shout imprecations, tongue hot with poison and words sharp like knives. Agents are advised not to leave the premises unless absolutely necessary. Staff have started to resign under pressure from the public. 

People hate them. 

Jesse hasn't come in since the capture of King's Row. Torbjörn has been working with Winston on shield generator prototypes, the two of them using their brilliant minds for arguing with each other more than anything. Angela spends her hours in the medbay despite the thinning of Overwatch staff who need her services. Reinhardt is often with Ana and Jack, in discussion. 

Whenever he isn't, he trains with Lena on simulations. His barrier versus Lena's pulse pistols. His size and brute strength against Lena's speed and versatility. Their laughter in these diversions, shields from the outside world, a cover to the ears from the angry shouts. 

People hate them. 

Ana goes out on a mission overseas against Talon and doesn't come back. Her sendoff is small, casket heavy on Lena's shoulder despite the absence of a body. They couldn't find it, they said, couldn't trace her comm, they said. Her memorial plaque is cold-sleet gray carved brown, bronze like her skin and her eyes. Ana's daughter is deployed on tour. She could not come. 

Lena contemplates writing her a more personal letter in addition to the formal condolences Overwatch sends. She decides against it in the end. 

Ana's name doesn't find headlines. The street they ruin during the hostage rescue operation, however, does. Reinhardt doesn't leave the training room for days. Jack has to relocate to Switzerland for political reasons, or at least Lena thinks so. 

People hate them. 

The Swiss Watchpoint is obliterated. Angela has to be guided to a chair while Athena announces the news. Winston has to be restrained like a beast when news station after news station report on the incident,  _Overwatch Commander Jack Morrison believed dead_ flashing in colorful banners on every other channel. 

When Lena shoots the TV dead with a plasma pistol one day, not a single eyelash is bat. 

That night, she lets the tears flow in criss-crossing rivulets, limbs limp with alcohol, brain muffled drunk. In her dreams she counts beer bottles and steps over corpses, ruins, casualties. 

She wakes to a morning of Winston waiting in an empty mess hall next to Angela who has her many, many bags of clothes and medical material with her. They need not speak long for Lena to understand. 

People hate them. 

 

* * *

 

Sunlight beats down on Lena's back, through her jacket, sears her skin. She whips a towel across the back of her neck to smear off pooled sweat. The edge of the crate she's hefted aloft on one shoulder bites into the indent of her neck and it stings, though only a little. Certainly not more than how her spindly arms are stinging with its weight. 

She makes a guttural sound when she deposits the box into the trunk of a car. A roll of her shoulders makes bones crack. She brushes unruly hair back with a shaking hand and, huffing, takes a proffered glass of water with the other. 

"Thank you so much for the help, _nong_ –ah, this good for nothing grandson of mine." 

"It's no trouble," Lena replies. Water drips from her hand, beads of precipitation from the glass. "I mean, I can't just let a sweet, old lady suffer over a couple of boxes." 

"You are too kind," the old woman opines with a hand on Lena's forearm. Lena smiles and shrugs, good-natured, sweating, laughing. 

"It's really not a problem." 

"Are you sure you don't want to come in? For some lunch? It's the least I can do to thank you." 

Lena shakes her hands with her head. "Oh, no, no, that's okay. I best get going anyway." She takes a single stride away to punctuate. "Have a good day, ma'am." 

" _Khàwp khun khâ_. I hope you friend your friend soon." 

In Lena's mind, she replies  _I hope so, too._

She wipes her towel across her face and shields her eyes from the Bangkok sun. Last month, to Lena, the sun belonged to Malaysia: the city of Ipoh. The month before that, Perth's, in Australia, and then Wellington's of New Zealand, and then Córdoba's, far in Argentina— 

It's been a while since it belonged to Gibraltar. Or even Westminster, for that matter. Lifting her hand higher, peering at the corner of the sun through the gap of middle and forefinger, she thinks of destinations. 

She's been sending Winston postcards. Quaint, colorful things with a photo on one side and a brief message on the other.  _Bangkok, Thailand. Missing you, love. Hope you're getting as much sun as I am,_ she wrote on her latest one, addressed to the old Gibraltar Watchpoint because where else could she send them? She fingers the card in the pocket of her jacket and imagines Winston reprimanding her for using up all her savings on aimless travel. 

 _Aimless_ , maybe on the grounds that she doesn't have definitive places she'd like to visit. Bunched with Winston's postcard, she pads her thumb along Amélie's photo. 

Aimless, but not entirely. She almost laughs at herself. 

Overwatch has been gone almost a year now—outlawed, banned, disbanded, _destroyed,_ the news used so many words back then. Now all the words they use are  _destruction_ and  _violence_ in cycle in different languages to speak of the things happening to the world still. 

Lena watches the news sometimes. Reads papers, sometimes, when they're in a language she can halfway comprehend. Just last week, a building burned in Phuket, suspected arson. A duo of omnics were savagely beaten in an alley in downtown Bangkok. 

The latter one, she knows about. She was the one who chased away the attackers and brought both victims to the nearest place they could get attention. The news called her a vigilante. One of the omnics didn't make it. Two of the thugs are having her hunt down and want to press charges. 

She wonders, sometimes, if the rest of the old team are seeing the same world she is. Wonders if they still want to trylike she does. Wonders if they  _do_ like she is. 

If they'd care, after what the world did to them. 

Entering the post office, she pulls out the postcard from her pocket and asks for a pen at the counter in her best Thai. 

 _Still fighting the good fight,_ she adds to the message, _st_ _ill looking._

Later that night, she does sprints around her motel's block until the exhaustion almost blinds her. She runs from ghosts. 

She won't be able to fall asleep otherwise. 

 

* * *

 

One year, eight months. 

onw _ **ards**_ , _don't stop_ , **keep going**

 _somewhere_ , some ** _where_** , _she's **there**_

some **where**

 **som** _ewh **ere**_

she's  _ **ther** e_

 _keep_ **going**

don't stop

_onwards_

_pushedhe_ rawaypus _hed_ ** _herawayp_ ushedher** _away_

 _couldn'tsav **eenough** couldn't_saveenough **couldn't** _saveenou_ **gh**

_some hero you are_

_hop **e**_ **is so** _met_ imes a  ** _treach_** _er_ ous th _ **ing**_

**run run run**

She wakes up wet with sweat and cold with fear, jaw pried open by a soundless scream. Her heartbeat pulses in her ears, a pounding of terror-adrenaline-fury. She turns on every light in her hotel room. 

 

* * *

 

Overhead, the sky is sea-morning blue. Clear but still cool enough that the oversized jacket so snug around her person is justified to any looking eye. She blinks behind hanging hair and there comes the thought again that she should visit a hairdresser soon. She grabs absentmindedly at a fringe. 

"Quite beautiful, isn't it?" 

She catches herself quickly enough not to start. She does stiffen in caution, a smile coming to her face still because she's that kind of person. "The lake?" she asks stupidly. 

"And what lies beyond," the woman who boldly sits across from her agrees. "Or... within? At the center of? Whichever gets the point across." Her English is heavy, dripping with the country's accent like melting chocolate but otherwise smooth. She looks out at the lake. "Can you see it from here?" 

Lena rolls her lips into her mouth and turns to look. While much clearer from her room two floors higher up, the castle is still visible from the hotel's sixth floor café. "Mhm. Doesn't look like much from here, to be honest." 

An impassive hum. The way the woman plucks a roll of cigarette from her purse and puts it between her lips, dainty, elegant,  _familiar,_ makes Lena swallow and look away. Such sophisticated people, the French. "It is much more marvelous up close. Boats are available to board during the mornings for those who want to visit." 

"It's open to the public?" 

"Not quite." An impish glint comes to the woman's eyes. "Not the castle proper, but the island, one could set foot on without worry of dire punishment from the authorities." 

Lena nods her head in comprehension and lets cigarette smoke come her way. "Should probably visit before I go. Wouldn't hurt to do some sightseeing." 

"Is not to sightsee what tourists do?" 

"I... yeah. Well—I'm not completely a  _tourist,_ though." When the woman only blinks at her in question, she adds, "I'm a traveller, see? But, ah... I'm travelling for... well, I'm looking for someone." 

And so, the customary, "who?" 

And the customary photo, and the follow-up of, "my friend. She disappeared about... two years ago, now. Two and four months."  

And a very  _un_ customary, "this is Amélie Lacroix, no?" 

Lena hasn't heard the name said in so long a time that her fingers start to shake. She pulls back her hand and the photo with it just slightly, bones stiff and muscles heavy with the shock. "Y–you know her? Have you seen her? Has she been _here?_ " 

"Ah, _ami,_ she is  _from_ here," the woman supplies. She tips ash carelessly to the floor. "A wee girl I walked to school with in the mornings. We were neighbors. Her father translated various texts for a living and her mother, sickly. What little fortune they had left to their name went to medicine." 

Lena frowns, nods her head once, and pockets the photo protectively. The woman's cigarette ash flies everywhere. "So... you haven't seen her recently?" 

"Oh, no, I'm sorry– _missing_ , though, Amélie? _Two years?_ Unfortunate. She grew to be so beautiful. A far cry from the little girl out of her castle." 

"Out of her castle?" 

The woman gathers long, blonde hair to one shoulder. It scraggles over the flimsy strap of her dress. "Her father was of the Guillard bloodline. Prominent family from before the Revolution. Are you well acquainted with your World History?" she asks, and when Lena shrugs no, she flaps her hand. "Mind not, then. Summarized, the Guillard descended from power and the château eventually fell into the  _Crédit Agricole's_ hands generations later." 

Lena looks at the jutting shape of the castle in the distance. Her knee starts to bounce under the table. "Amé never got to go in there?" 

"To be deprived of a birthright," is the woman's way of confirmation. "She seemed fine, regardless. When she returned. Adopted by an affluent English couple if I can remember well. A dancer, yes? Turned out to become one." The woman snubs out her cigarette with the pad of her heel. "She came with her husband. Wanted to see home before they left the country again." 

"How was she, then?" Lena ventures timidly. She avoids the woman's eyes. 

"Happy, it seemed." When she doesn't follow up, the woman asks, gently, "how do you know she lives?"

Lena averts her eyes, brushes her hair back to have something to do with her hands. Air is suddenly hard to come by. "I don't... I was hoping maybe she'd be home if she isn't anywhere else." 

It's not the right response, but the woman has as much grace in conversation as she does poise. She doesn't speak on it. Ice-grip cold clutches Lena's gut. "A fair assumption. All things must, no? Come home, I mean." 

Lena attempts to give the woman her most inexpressive look. She doesn't know if she succeeds. "Thanks... thank you for the information." 

The woman is still looking at the castle on the lake when Lena leaves her. She's lit a new cigarette. 

Lena spares it a last look, too. All things must, in the end. 

Come home. 

 

* * *

 

It takes a while for the electricity and water to be reconnected. Lena couldn't say the same for acquiring cleaning supplies, thankfully, because stores are just downstairs and more are about a block away. 

Patrice would  _kill_ her for neglecting the place this long _._ She'd be happy though, that's a fact Lena knows. She'd shove a broom in Lena's face, give her shite for forgetting to come home, and then hug her afterwards with tears in her eyes. 

"M'home, ma. Sorry for not coming any sooner. You don't hate me, do you?" Lena asks the portrait of Patrice on the mantle next to Patty's and Patrick's. Dust has settled on the glasses of their frames. "You got a little bit of a... here, I'll get that for ya." 

She wipes down the pictures. She does the same with her siblings' awards and other displays before piling them carefully into a newly purchased trunk. Patrice's clothes are gathered, joins the twins' leftover belongings. Lena recognizes the blue dress Patrice wore on the day of her highschool graduation, smile as golden as Lena's medals, hair gray, eyes glazed. Youth, the start of the dream. Lena's throat gets tight. 

She fills their trunk like her mum did her dad's years ago. Gérard's movie collection joins the cluster with his watch and necktie. Patty's old dresses are folded on top. Patrick's suits are wedged into the side of them. 

Amélie's books stay in their own box in the attic and her music records go atop the mantle in a clean pile against her jewelry box, because you don't bury away what doesn't belong to the dead. 

_Onwards, don't stop, keep going._

She drops it, the jewelry box, while she's polishing it. " _Bollocks–bloody idiot,_ " she mutters. Jewelry scatters and rolls under the couches. A jut of a crack has popped out on one corner of the box. She frowns, ponders repair methods until she notices the slit of paper poking through the gap. 

A light push and pull, and the false compartment slides open. Her old letters fall from her trembling hand. Her knees fall with them. The ball of air in her throat pops. 

She sleeps that night with the lights on. 

 

* * *

 

London's sun is cool, light muted by clouds and heat screened by changing seasons. Lena dresses in layers when she goes out. 

She picks up flowers first. Two bouquets, one tucked into each elbow, chrysanthemums in bloom. She gives a sweet, little girl a single blossom from one bouquet when she helps Lena cross the street, raising her small hands to stop the big cars for the small, adult woman with her hands full. 

"Do I know you, miss?" the girl quips innocently, chrysanthemum stem in her hand and thought wrinkles on her forehead. Lena laughs a quiet laugh and shakes her head. 

"Ah, just got me confused with someone, love. Ta now. Thanks for the help." She adjusts the flowers in her arms and twists away. "Don't stop helping people, okay? Remember–the world could always use more heroes." 

"Wh–oi,  _oi,_ I know y—" 

Lena leaves with walking turning to jogging.  _Thank you,_ the little girl calls after her, loud and clear like sparking embers in the dark. 

In the cemetery, seated between her mum and dad and a bouquet of flowers each for them both, fingers carded through the grass, wind on her scalp and through trimmed hair, she allows herself the smallest, saddest smile. 

 

It's  _this_ particular pub in Devonshire Street that Lena's heard things about. Frequented by certain people who like to vandalize things, humans, omnics. A nameless group of ruffians who string fun with violence,  _with_ the kind of principles that makes Lena's blood run cold. 

Although, she supposes to call them ruffians isn't accurate. Local police can't nab them outright because they're neat people, successful people, people that don't take baseless accusations well and can press charges. They're smart, quiet when they need to be, and it's not until her sixth night in the pub that she catches two of them actually speak to one another. 

"'Nother pint?" 

" _Whu_ –uh, yeah, yeah, love, sure." Preoccupied, squinting past the other patrons, observing, she adds absentmindedly, "can I get some more peanuts?" 

"Sure." Lena squints still. Her knee bounces. "You sure you don't want popcorn instead, mate? You haven't touched these peanuts." 

Lena turns back to the counter with a start. The bartender, frowning, red hair, nails on the countertop a polished gold, quirks a brow at her. Lena stammers. "I–I'm sorry, I was just–" 

The glowering façade cracks and Lena stops, heat rushing to her neck and her ears. She purses her lips and ducks her head. "Oi..." 

When the bartender laughs with quaking shoulders and crinkled eyes, Lena blows a loud raspberry. "Sorry," the bartender manages in between laughs, sounding very not sorry. "What're you looking at, anyway?" 

Lena raises her head, throws a furtive glance sideward. The men are gone. "Uh, well, _nothing_ now, love." 

"Mm? Sixth night you're here. Same spot, looking around, _waiting_ , I take it. I'm in my right mind to think I should call the police on you." 

"Wh–no, no– _ah,_ I just—I'm sorry, I'm not a crook or anything, _please believe me_ —" 

"I'm fucking with you again." 

"Oh, bloody hell." 

In the ensuing laughter, Lena reluctantly joins in. The bartender's face is kind, freckles lit by the pub lights, hair long, red, one slender shoulder showing under a lopsided collar. Lena thoughtlessly tilts her head. 

"Have we met before?" And then when the bartender grins, all good humor and raised eyebrows, she sputters, " _ah_ , I–I realize how that sounds, I'm not... _hitting_ on you or anything, not that– _not that_ –you _shouldn't_ be hit on, you're _very_ pretty and funny and I'm quite _gay_ , yes– _I mean_ , okay, _yeah_ –but I just... I think I've seen you _before_ , and..." 

She trails off, flounders, hand tight around her pint. The bartender tilts her head and her expression is tender. "Orphanage? Outside London?" 

Lena freezes. The bartender must see because she nods her head solemnly. "I'm happy you remember me given we didn't talk much back then." A customer asks for peanuts and she hands him Lena's untouched bowl. " _Here_ _, mate_ –or, y'know, you pretty much ignored me, I s'pose." 

" _Ignored_ you—" 

"Oh, you did," the bartender says a matter-of-factly but her smile stays kind. "In the years I spent in that place with you, I haven't seen you make a single close friend other than..." She pauses. Snaps her fingers, face falling in thought. "Ah, _bugger_ , what's her name..." 

"Amélie." 

" _Yeah!_ Seen her in pictures on the internet, I did. She really took the dancing seriously, yeah? Real gorgeous." She stops when she sees Lena's face, blank, cold, a monolith. "Oh... right–I'm sorry. I saw the news, terrible out in Gibraltar. We shouldn't be talking about this—" 

"No, ain't that. Just..." Lena opens her mouth, shuts it. Tries and fails. She settles with a shrug. "Yeah, just... bad things." 

"Mm, yeah. I'm sorry about... y'know, few years back, the place got..." 

Lena shakes her head to stop her. The bartender does. Lena works around the lump in her throat and gives her best smile. "But, _brighter_ things, yeah? Here's a proper introduction for us both. Lena, love." 

"Know  _you_ already. Emily. Call me  _Em_ if that's a mouthful." They shake over the counter. Emily's hand is warm, calloused and hardened in places work has beaten it raw. Her grip is strong, too. "So, you gonna tell me what it is you keep coming back here for?" 

"I can't have a drink every night if I want to?" 

"You barely drink your pints." 

"Fair point. I'm, ah..." 

Emily leans forward, catches her chin with her palm, and raises her eyebrows at Lena. "You watching out for the guys in black?" 

"I could be," Lena murmurs. Emily quirks a brow. Lena sucks a breath through her teeth, says _fuck it_ , trust before you distrust, the good in people, all that. " _Or I am_. I've accepted long ago I'm not very good with subterfuge and recon." 

"Maybe actually _drink_ or  _eat_ when you're in a pub, I suggest," Emily mutters. "What about them?" 

Lena looks warily at Emily, debates the pros and cons of divulging this kind of information. She considers bullshitting for the briefest moment, but then Emily goes on to say, "they've been coming here a while. All sneaky and such. I've been working nights here for about seven months now and they started coming around six ago. And wouldn't you know it, bad stuff start happening around London at the same time." 

Lena frowns, moves to take a necesssary swig from her drink because  _subterfuge,_ and asks, "anything else on them?" 

"They're not your regular thugs, I'll give you that. Last week the district attorney was here with them." 

Lena thinks about this. Last week, a clinic was ransacked. Couple of drunk good-for-nothings, said the news, but now she isn't so sure. 

She works with that with a frown. If she had Winston and Athena, they'd feed her intel, transmissions, bugged conversations. Jack would outline a plan. Angela would advise her through an earpiece and mutter  _try not to be so obvious when you stare, Lena, please._

Ana would keep watch outside, up on a building, a falcon with her scope. Jesse would be in the background in a different getup, ready to spring to action when something goes wrong. Or it'd be Reinhardt instead, or Torbjörn, and Lena will have the same level of safety and confidence. 

She stops thinking about this. 

"Why are you looking out for these guys, Lena?" asks Emily through the daydream. Lena shrugs. 

"Someone has to." 

Emily's eyes stray down, to Lena's chest, the bulge around her chest under the coat. She rolls her lips into her mouth and nods. Lena's accelerator weighs heavy on her sternum. 

 

* * *

 

Lena tails a boy she saw speaking with one of the shady men from the pub one night. He's a clean cut lad, dark-skinned, darker-haired. He walks with the broad shoulders and strong strides of a man with military training and glances around moment from moment like one scared for his life. 

She blinks from one roof to the next as quietly as she can, the blue of her paths stark still in the night. She stays away from the corners to avoid the light being seen. She has her pulse pistols ejected into her hands. 

The man weaves into a parking lot, empty save for an unmarked, black SUV and several innocuous-looking guards in suits on standby. A car door opens and out steps the district attorney Lena's seen once or twice in the news. Atty Edward Oliver. Following him is another man, Asian, short and stocky, hair wildly blonde, wearing thick-rimmed glasses. Lena's eyes narrow behind her digital binoculars. She zooms and snaps a photo. 

They converse, the three of them. Oliver flails his arms in angry proclamations. The blonde one is coolly gesturing, in turn. The third of them looks restless. 

Restless, until one of the guards on standby approaches and puts a gun to his head. He freezes. The gunshot rings like a fracture in the silence. Lena bristles. Oliver retreats with the rest of the men into the SUV, and only when they've disappeared down the street does Lena blink her way down and across to check on him. 

Blood has coagulated behind his head, almost black. The hole of gore glares at Lena from his temple. She contacts the police before she flees the scene. 

On the rooftop, just a building away, she catches the blur of movement and red lights in formation. Her pistols flip to her hands and she turns, ready to shoot, but they're gone. 

 

The following night, in the pub, Emily gives her a critical stare. "You're not stopping, are you?" 

Lena watches the news on the TV mounted above the bar. Drug transaction gone awry, they say. Victim had the profile of that kind of individual. _It's the youth that are ripe for these distributors. They will be brought to justice._ The Chief of Police giving a statement with Oliver standing behind him. 

"Nope," Lena answers. A mug of beer finds its way to her and Emily mutters  _on the house_ before attending to the other side of the bar. 

Lena looks the guy up. A trainee at the local police department, fresh out of school. Kind heart, good head on his shoulders, bright future ahead of him. Was the second warm body in a family of three. 

She sends his mother and little brother flowers anonymously. 

 

Back in Westminster, browsing through the photos taken with her binoculars, she stops on one with the blonde-haired man. She prints it out. Where has she seen him before? 

 

* * *

 

Emily helps her look out for them. She gives Lena information, movements only a bartender can see and hears about. She's good at it, too. She definitely has a better hold on the whole scouting thing than Lena does and she doesn't even look to be breaking a sweat. 

"Your job gives you an unfair advantage," Lena defends, sipping on yet another free mug of beer. Her first one's always free. Emily, real sweetheart she is, tips her a wink and a smug smirk. 

"An unfair advantage I'm using, for  _your_ advantage." 

"You shouldn't be, though. Shouldn't be doing this, I mean. It's not safe, love. Just leave this to me." 

Emily tilts her head, dark eyes lit ocher by the pub's luminescence. Her freckles are stark enough in the light to be counted with ease. "I want to help," she says with damning finality. She hesitates next, just once, but eventually goes for grasping Lena's hand and squeezing it. "You don't have to be alone, yeah?" 

Lena looks at the freckled hand atop hers like an alien thing. Body warmth sheens her skin, seeps through flesh, lights her nerves fire-gold. "Careful," she whispers. Although Emily nods, Lena doesn't know if she meant to address it to her or herself. 

 

When she injures herself in a brawl-turned-shootout, thugs in leather turning to firearms when they realize their bats and crowbars won't do well against Lena and her accelerator, she barges into Emily's condo with blood on her side and cheek. Emily springs from behind her desk of books and printouts to scamper to the window. 

"Ow,  _ow,_ " Lena whines as Emily picks her up from the floor. The wind rustling her hair dies when Emily shuts the window. "Am I ruining your night off, Em love? Sorry, as you can see I'm in a bit of trouble—" 

" _Heaps_ of trouble, mate." 

"Righto–in  _heaps_ of trouble and I couldn't drag my ass any further than to here—" 

" _Shut up,_ " Emily hisses, and her voice is all kinds of shaky with fear and alarm. She leads Lena to sit on a couch and her hands are shaking, eyes wide, lips wobbling. "I–should I call for medics? An ambulance? I–I've got my phone in here somewhere—" 

" _No_ ," Lena rasps. Emily freezes and her face paints disbelief well. " _Medkit_. You've got one, yeah? Every bloody house has got one. Just..." 

"Yeah, _yes_ , okay." 

Emily disappears for all of ten seconds before reappearing with her medkit, a jumbling, jittering mess with a pale face. She nearly drops the damn thing in her haste. Lena takes the scissors from the box and cuts lines to tear off her undershirt easier. 

"H–how'd this happen?" 

"Punks tried to rob a store. You'll hear about it in the news tomorrow," Lena croaks. The shirt comes off and the bullet wound peers at them like a glob of crushed, bleeding muscle. Emily looks like she might faint. 

Lena holds one of Emily's hands, stains the pale of the skin red. "Got some liquor in here, love?" 

"Yes, _yeah_ —" 

"You know how to sew things shut? Got a good grip?" 

Emily stops breathing. She nods mutely. 

"Good. Get me something strong and the longest tweezers you've got. I need you to do a little bit of this for me." 

 

Emily lets her stay, after that. Mostly because she's handicapped due to the injury, but also because she's a nice person and Lena's a good friend, Lena supposes. Unless one has a name for someone they've been helping case a couple of dangerous criminals for the past few months, then they'll settle with _good friend._

She's studying, Lena learns. Applied Physics at St Mary's. "It's fascinating, Science at work. I've a gift for computations and Maths as it turns out," she tells Lena one morning while she's changing the wound's dressing. "You like Physics?" 

"We're not mates or anything, but I'm sure Physics is a fine fellow," Lena replies. Emily rolls her eyes. " _Oi_. That was funny. I've got a friend, though. Crazy for Physics, Science, the whole lot." 

"I'd like to meet them. What's their name?" 

Lens gives a small, wistful smile. "Winston. Real genius, that guy. I love him." 

Emily smiles back. Her eyes flick to the accelerator, humming on Lena's chest, and then back down to her ministrations. 

She never asks whenever Lena says the kitchen light be left on while she sleeps in the living room, but Lena can see the question in the lock of her jaw and furrow of her brows every night. One evening, Lena tells her, "you can ask, you know," and she blinks, looks at Lena with kind eyes. 

"Why the light?" 

Lena's jaw works. "Can't sleep without a night light," she mutters, shrugs for good measure. "Nightmares. Things I'd rather not remember ever. Can't keep them away when I'm unconscious." 

"Like what?" 

"The war. The orphanage. My parents. Patty, Patrick, my ma. This thing on my chest." She pauses, chances a glance at her jacket hanging on the coat rack. At the pocket with the old, creased picture. "Overwatch. _Amélie_." 

Emily's eyebrows lower. She chews her lip, nods her head. "Lena, you really think she's alive?" 

Lena hesitates. And it hurts that she feels herself hesitate, the doubt thick like steel lodged in her throat. She nods regardless because hope is treacherous. Hope builds, like Ana said. Emily nods back. 

"Y'know," she starts, pauses. Reluctance glazes thick on her face like molasses spilled on a solid surface. "I never _was_ mad at you lot. Never did blame you for anything. It was always in your best interests to help people." 

Lena laughs under her breath, clogged and breathless. "Doesn't mean we didn't bumble up once in a while." 

"You _tried_ , though. _That's_ got importance to it." 

Emily's hand finds Lena's. Lena meets her eyes, and her mouth goes dry.

 

When Emily holds her hand again, nights and nights more later, their mouths follow, and then the rest of their skin and bodies in a span of only seconds. Emily lights her up, nerves burning like livewires, wildfires. Emily's skin is moonlit ivory. Her jaw strikes the moonlight fierce. 

Lena's brain buzzes with pictures, snapshots burning at the edges, fading into colors like ruined polaroids. The bumps of Emily's spine under her palms, the shadows in the ridges of her ribs, the light riding her clavicles. Lena's accelerator, bulky but not in the way, skin still on skin and hands still on hands. 

The warmth of tongues and fingertips. Emily's freckles, counted, lit red, plentiful. A splash of them on the flare of her left hip. The most delicate part of her on the lifeline of Lena's palm. Lena's own on the curve of Emily's chin. 

Colors burn the back of her eyeballs, explode into whites before her eyes. When the shakes stop and her breath returns to her, the world eases back into form around her. She assembles the pictures of the night in her head. 

She watches Emily sleep, her temple on the bump of Lena's collarbone, her hands on the small of Lena's back. Lena eases to her feet carefully to not wake her up. 

She grabs the blanket and turns on the kitchen light before going back bed. 

 

* * *

 

Thursdays always find the blonde man and Edward Oliver conniving in the latter's office. 9pm, always, _exactly_ , the unmarked SUV will arrive and right now, arrive it does. It veers into the parking area and takes up two spaces. Just for that Lena hates them more already. 

Out steps Oliver with his companion, flanked by bodyguards. Lena enters the building when they do, them through the entrance, her through the vents. 

They're running weapons. From London to some yet unnamed organization based out in Italy, rolled over red tape and under merchandise checks with the help of Oliver. It took a while to find that much, being without Athena's help and having only her fists and a bunch of black-eyed, broken-nosed thugs to rely on for information. She doesn't need Athena to know Oliver's getting huge sums of money, though. And that whoever's got him has all of it to shed. 

Crawling is hard with the bulge of the accelerator but she manages. The vents' map has been burned thoroughly enough into her brain that she doesn't second guess her path. 

Sure enough, voices come from under her later. Oliver's, angry. Another's, calmer. In her hand is Emily's recorder. It clicks quietly to life. 

"... _you promised us this week, Edward. It'll hurt me to go back there with nothing, but not as much as it'll hurt you._ " 

" _You don't think I'm trying as hard as I can? Fucking Chief of Police is starting to get under my skin. Keeps asking for more, the greedy ass._ " 

" _If you weren't so sloppy with your cop guys and that trainee didn't find things and spell it out on his own, we wouldn't have had to include the chief in the operation in the first place. He impressed me more than you ever did._ " 

" _Don't use that condescending tone with me, I'll—_ " 

" _You'll what? Have more people killed? Rob another clinic? Divert my attention with the news? Because that's all you've been doing instead of getting the job_ done." 

Silence. Lena clenches her fists. The accelerator's steel and straps are digging into her ribs and neck with her position, but she holds it. 

" _Listen,_ Uematsu _._ You _tell your bosses to be patient. You_ need  _me for this. I won't be pushed around by–by an organization of_ thugs  _because that's all you are, whatever you call yourselves,_ Talon  _or some other rubbish–_ " 

Talon.  _Talon._ Toshio Uematsu, the correspondent. Gérard's voice in the conference room. Amélie's ashen skin. Sheets scattered and blood in their apartment. Ana's empty casket. 

Dead bodies. Bombings. Buildings falling to the ground. Fresh memorials. 

She snatches the recorder, stuffs it in her jacket, and kicks down _hard_. The vent whines, cracks, and then gives _._ She falls through the ceiling in a splash of iron, paint, and plaster. Oliver howls. Uematsu wheels back with wide eyes and collapses to his back. 

" _Asshole,_ " Lena bites out. Uematsu makes to crawl away. Oliver has dashed out of the office and his heavy footfalls echo in the ensuing hallway. 

" _Eliminate Oliver_ ," Uematsu says. His finger comes off the comm in his ear and the connected hand delves into his jacket to emerge with a pistol. He fires thrice at the blue streak Lena leaves when she blinks around to his side. He redirects his weapon. Lena takes it from him, breaks about two fingers in the process, and punches him twice on the face. 

" _Asshole!_ " she repeats in a broken roar. Another punch punctuates the unhealed wound festering under the skin where her heart pounds wild. "You– _you—_ " 

" _Widowmaker,_ " Uematsu hisses through the blood in his mouth. The window to their side shatters with a gunshot and Lena cries out when the bullet tears through the bicep of her reared arm. Uematsu shoves her off to make his escape. 

Lena clutches her arm and scurries toward cover. Another shot rings out, punches a cracked hole through the nearest cabinet, and scatters files and torn paper like confetti. A look over the desk grants her a glimpse of glowing red lights in the night. 

She blinks away and out of the office, continuing in a sprint down the hallway. Her pulse pistols eject into her hands. She rounds a corner and darts into the next corridor lit only by moonlight, translucent silver filtering in through the glass walls. 

Oliver is at the end of the hallway, bathing in blood and light. His body is riddled with holes. 

Lena doesn't reach him. Glass explodes and she's hurled off her path, head hitting the wall, a body pinning her down: cold, hard, coiled with power and weight. Her pistols fling somewhere forgotten. She squirms and twists, sees herself face to face with the seven lights of an assailant's visor and snarls. 

" _Get off!_ " she howls, and the woman, the shooter, she's  _purple_ , from her skin to the suit with a neckline dipping to depths of sin. The shooter raises her gun and points it directly at Lena's face. 

Lena jerks her head sharply to the side. The shot discharges by her skull, fills her ears and brain with a deafening whistle. She lands her punch at least, and her assailant tumbles back. The rifle is flung toward Oliver's foot. Lena thrusts the rest of the shooter away to bound to her feet. 

Her head throbs. Her hearing is warped, muted, fading and then back. The shooter manages a kick and her leg is _powerful_ , as strong as it is thick, thigh toned, calves formed and feeling like _metal_. Lena stumbles back with a pained huff of air. 

She charges with a blink once she's caught herself. Another punch to the shooter's face. The shooter's head whips back with the impact. 

Lena's fist rears again. The shooter's head turns aright, the visor of seven, glowing eyes sliding back. The punch does not come. 

Amélie is blinking back at her, scowling, a path of blood going from her nostril to her upper lip. 

Lena's breath dies in her chest. Her hands shake. Amélie forces her back harshly and her breath returns in a rush, hard, _strong_ , a freight train flung off its tracks and crushing her lungs. Blood pounds in her ears like the  _bang bang_ of angry drums. 

She can't hear anything but if she tries hard enough, she'll hear that accent: the snark, the laugh. She breathes and smells tea, some wine, the delightful scent of aged books: distant moments, long passed. 

When her mouth forms the syllables, tongue rolling around sounds, she does not hear herself say  _Amélie_ but she _knows_ Amélie does. 

Amélie does not react. 

She coils to attack. She lands a punch, two, a kick, a headbutt, and then Lena catches the next punch with one hand and the one after with another. Amélie growls and tries pulling her hands away. Lena's jaw is trembling. 

"What did they  _do_ to you?" she asks. _Shouts?_ She doesn't know, ears still ringing, pulse thunder-drumming, but she  _knows_ she says it. Amélie does not react still. 

"What happened?" Lena tries again, desperate. Salt teases the back of her eyeballs. She blinks furiously. "Your skin!" 

Amélie's lips, cobalt, dry, peel back with bared teeth. She knocks her head against Lena's and Lena curses, hands coming up to clutch it. Lena falls back with the whip of a gun up her chin. Amélie glares her down. Lena's breaths are rushing, _running_ ,  ** _run._**

A purple finger comes up to depress on the intercomm behind her visor. Amélie frowns through a transmission and then clicks her tongue. She turns and walks away. 

" _Wait!_ " Lena screams. 

She has a graphook now, Amélie. It launches through the shattered glass wall and pulls her with it. Lena scurries to her feet to peer out after her. Wind from the hovercraft above laps at her face and she stares at the mark of Talon on the aircraft. She stares as Amélie is shut away behind the hatch, as the aircraft swerves, soars, flies off. 

From below, the color of flashing sirens. Lena can only still hear the thunder of her own blood and the high whistle from Amélie's gunshot. Welling salt behind her eyes seeps and falls. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Polokwane, South Africa: Sepedi (Northern Sotho)_  
>  boeletša, hle: come again or again, please  
> gabotse, eba le letšatši le lebotse: goodbye,  
> have a nice day  
> mahlatse: good luck
> 
>  _Bangkok, Thailand: Thai_  
>  khàwp khun khâ: thank you
> 
> pls correct me if i messed up any of these. thanks!!


	5. not one dives down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this finale was a _beast_ to write and i only have apologies to accompany it with. september-october was a very, very busy time for me and i didn't get to work on this as quickly as i wanted
> 
> anyway, this finale was written as one long, 20k nightmare but divided into two parts for easier consumption. this first part focuses more on tracer, overwatch, other heroes, and the recall as per canon events, and the last is the finale proper ~~with lots of lena/amélie~~
> 
> yo!! i wanna thank my dear friend **_Robohero_** for being my beta and holding my hand while i s u f f e r e d through these chapters!! :') she was the sunshine to the bleak of my writer's block hhhhhhhh thank you angel!! 
> 
> check her out [here on twitter](https://twitter.com/robohero) and [here on tumblr](http://robohero.tumblr.com/)!! she draws tender widowtracer and ~~v v nice abs~~ will yell at u abt widowtracer!!! support!! this sweet bean!! of a human being!! :') 
> 
> also on a side note i've set up a [tumblr](https://m-arahuyo.tumblr.com) but since i haven't really had the time to fix it up proper, it's still bare and boring but!! yes it's there. :') most likely, fics will be cross posted to there sometime soon so talk to me there or w/e
> 
> thanks to those who have read, followed, and commented on this thus far!! you all give me life :')
> 
> enjoy!!

A̕r̵e͝ y̕o͜u a pu̡she̵r̶ or̕ ҉ar͘e̷ ͏y͞ou̸ ͏a͢ pu̵l͠le̸r͢?  
͞I pull t̕h̸e ̛w̷e̡i͞g̶ht̛ to͝wa͏rd̛s̕ me͟  
͠A҉n͜d̨ I ̵la͝ck̴ th̵e ͜zest̡ ̕of ̴a lem̧on̨, ̛l͠ook͠ing͟ ̛f̶o͠rwa͢rd̸  
U͟nl͢es͏s I ͝ha͝ve ̕a͘ w̴om͝an pushing͠ ҉me

  
̴A͠ c͘a҉nop̡y ̸of̸ r̕ed͏-bi̵lled̷ q҉u͘elea  
͢Passed̡ ov̢ȩr ҉t̷h͏e͘ ̨b͠lue  
̢A f̢iv̸e҉ hour͠ f̡l̸o̴ck, not o̵n̨e d͡i̷ve̶s͟ dow̶n  
T͢o͞ ͡te͟ll̛ ̢y͜ou̧ the t͝ruth

***

 

Emily's chest heaves with breath. Her shape under the sheets is one of sprawled limbs and awkward angles, spread thin and spread tired by university and night shifts at the pub. A fine rivulet of spit runs silvery from her mouth to her earlobe. 

Lena rises from the vanity stool. She closes the bedroom door behind her, fetches her gauntlets from the living room, and leaves through the fire escape.  _People could be looking for me,_ she'd told Emily once. People that could be on rooftops, in unsuspecting crowds, in dark spaces, in darker clothing. 

The morning is barely _morning_ behind her head as she weaves down the ladder, all dull grays and lazy blues meeting at the middle, smeared dark. It's cold. She gathers her jacket around her and tosses wary eyes over her shoulders. 

She made copies of the casette tape from the former district attorney's office, untouched and physical to ensure no tampering. Mailed them to every media outlet she knew and sat in front of the TV at Westminster later that night as news station after news station reported on Edward Oliver, the Chief of Police,  _Talon._

Mere days after the scandal, the Chief resigned: days more and he disappeared. Edward Oliver was given a quick and quiet burial and has since been despised. Lena has been careful about where she spends her nights because the authorities may be slow, but she knows Talon isn't. 

London's streak of violence may have stopped, but she knows Talon  _hasn't._

Sometimes she thinks _someone_ is watching her from the rooftops, or a window high up, or some shadowed corner in the bedroom with seven red eyes. Sometimes she tries not to think about it, sometimes it's all she  _can_ think about. 

Amélie is alive. 

She has purple skin, a gun, and a visor with eyes the number of which references her new namesake, but she's _alive_. Widowmaker, they call her now. They:  _Talon._ _Widowmaker_ , with her eyes blank like polished slates and lips always set in the hard line of a blade. She looks at Lena with the same detachment of three years ago in that hospital room at Gibraltar: gray, stiff, sullen, not herself. 

They should've known, back then. _She_ should've known. 

Lena ducks into an alley and switches on her comm. Police radio chatter is fed to her ear. A cat's shadow stretches long and lean from behind her, stalks by and jostles trash cans. The clatter rides up her spine and she walks faster, shadowed by apartment buildings, gray and blue sunless overhead. 

Ghosts saunter aplenty. 

 

Talon doesn't have a pattern. Or, maybe they do, and it takes more than just one mind to unravel the motif. Gérard had the GIGN and its facilities and warm bodies. Jack had Gérard and the rest of Overwatch. 

Lena has her comm, a highly illegal feed from local law enforcement channels, and her own eyes and ears. She's nothing if not resourceful but most nights, they're just not enough. 

Nights like these: like bullets and plasma, shattered concrete and the blur of purple, heart punched to her throat. She ejects her pistols and returns fire behind a steel partition. Blood pricks her tongue with rust. Under her, her knee threatens to buck with pain, weight, fractured bone,  _seething, painful_ , and she surrenders. Her pistols flip back and she folds herself behind the barrier. She screams curses between her teeth. 

Static buzzes in her ear and the garble of voices. A whine like police sirens echoes in the backdrop. "They're getting away," she croaks. The Talon hovercraft approaches on the sky and she tries to stand, fails, clutches her knee. She groans expletives. "Their extraction is here, they're getting away! Get a squad up here for crying out loud!" 

" _Who is this?_ " Static, her own pained noises, return fire. " _Identify yourself immediately, this channel is—_ " 

"Bloody _useless,_ " she growls, hoarse. A moment to brace herself and then she's up again, shouting anger, shouting pain, pistols flipped to fire. 

Widowmaker turns to face her and raises her rifle. She  _smiles._

And it's hard not to see Amélie. Smirking smugly behind a cup of coffee, smiling to some line of a poem she's reading, laughing at some private joke. When Widowmaker pirouettes, Lena sees Amélie's grace, and Amélie's leotard, and Amélie's pointe shoes, bought with gambling money and from the closest, decent market— 

The shot rings. The image of Amélie collapses like shattered glass and Tracer– _Tracer_ –blinks continuously in a fierce arc. She fires back with angry intention and Widowmaker slinks away, rifle clicking to assault. Bullets whiz by Tracer's ear. She smells burnt hair. 

" _Hold still!_ " Widowmaker growls before returning fire. Tracer's laugh bubbles out, loud and automatic. 

"I will if you will!" 

Widowmaker's face scrunches and the intensity of her return fire is enough show of derision. 

Tracer dives. A warning throb rocks her injured knee on the landing but she powers through with a scream and her fingers hard on the triggers. Widowmaker zips behind cover and Tracer takes the opportunity to leap over the ledge once her pistols' charges click empty. 

She falls, breathes, and blinks in a blind line to crash through the closest window. 

Broken glass cuts her face and tears through the legs of her suit. Her knee hurts like an absolute _bitch_ and her heavy breathing breaks through the silence of the dark space. In her ear, police chatter still. Through the broken window, she sees the Talon hovercraft coming with reinforcements for their operative _—_ Widowmaker. 

Lena— _Lena—_ escapes. 

 

* * *

 

The knee is bad for all of a week and puts a damper on her vigilante duties. Granted, Talon has been very careful with their operations, although that barely means an opening isn't bound to show up or that they don't have other plans simmering in the undercurrent of London's current state of affairs. Lena has seen nothing but political scandal on the news since Edward Oliver. 

The constant fear of being tailed, watched, and targeted is also a constant. She's wary of dark spaces, and open windows, and small knocks in the night— _hold still hold still hold still._

There are lighter things, at least. Things to spark some hope. People have started to recognize the tiny woman with the glowing thing strapped to her chest _—_ most of them more welcoming than others. Local police are relatively quiet about the matter. 

Lena sometimes wonders if it's because they miss _them_ , too. 

"How's it feel?" Emily asks, carrying a bowl of cereal in each hand. Lena eases to the side to give her space on the couch. 

"Better than when I first busted it up," she says. She receives a proferred bowl with idle attention, prodding her knee with her free hand. "Might be able to go out tomorrow, maybe even tonight." 

"I meant  _that_." 

Lena's eyes jerk to follow Emily's elbow. On the screen, a reporter speaks in front of a small gathering of people holding up signs and old posters. The banner on the segment below reads,  _Heroes?_

She sees her face on one poster held up by a little boy. She looks at her bowl of cereal. 

"I don't know." 

"You don't know?" 

"I don't know," Lena confirms quietly. "They didn't want us before, did they? Said we did as much harm as we did good." 

"Do you think you did?" 

Lena looks Emily in the face. A speck of milk stains Emily's bottom lip, something more interesting than this conversation if she tries to think it hard enough. "We took down buildings." 

"Made sure they were evacuated, at least." 

"Some of those were homes." 

"But no one was hurt," Emily maintains. Lena shrugs, half-smiling, eyes already elsewhere. "Point is, you never hurt anyone. You put people's lives first. Buildings can be rebuilt. A life couldn't be brought back." 

Lena says nothing. The segment on the news stretches for a few more minutes and Emily nudges her on the arm at one point. 

"People are thanking you." 

The half-smile blooms full. Lena looks at the old Overwatch poster held up by en elderly woman on the screen. The faces on the poster look on at a brighter, better future. 

 

And the future  _does_ look brighter and better from there. 

Lena first learns about them on the news. They call themselves the Shambali, a band of omnics who defected from their bethren some time after the Omnic Crisis. Lived quiet, meditative lives somewhere disconnected in the Himalayas and who have brought with them teachings borne from their isolation. 

Lena comes to watch one of their conferences at Abbey Road one gloomy morning. Only one of them speaks—Mondatta, a towering omnic with a calm to his voice that extends to his posture, exuding surety that harmony between omnics and humans could be achieved. His robes fall glistening like paled sunlight behind him. 

"Let the past teach us the lessons we need to be taught," he says, flanked by guards, watched by an audience. "The choice is to live together as one kind, or perish apart as many. To treat one another with peace or destroy one another with war." 

Lena watches Mondatta's presentations. She clings to hope. She clings to kindness and Mondatta's supporters: she clings to night lights and the old, dead, Overwatch communicator she still wears on one ear. 

She clings so that she won't fall. 

 

It beeps one evening. 

A sallow blinking on the shelf above the TV, perched between Patrice's photo with the twins and a frame of her own mother and father. She watches it, blood cold, eyes wide, inside of her mouth dry. 

A trick of the light, comes the thought, but it blinks, and blinks, and  _blinks_ , and Lena kicks the coffee table over in her haste to fetch her laptop from her room. 

She wrenches open the thing with shaking hands. Arms the communicator onto her ear with cold fingers. When the laptop boots up to a gray window that says  _signal found:_ _line established_ , she feels her heart punch to her throat. 

She hits  _call_ without a second thought. 

And Winston speaks to her, and it takes every bit of _Tracer_ in her bones to keep from crying—

_Winston, is that you, love? It's been too long_

_yes, yes it has_

—and every bit of _Lena_ in her blood to believe this is  _real._

 _Where are you,_ Lena asks,  _how have you been, is everything okay,_ and Winston tells her,  _Gibraltar, all this time, Gibraltar. I've been fine, Lena, but I have to ask you something._

_Do you still believe?_

In a brighter future. In a better future. In peace and unity and  _trying._

"Of course I do," Lena says. "I always have and I always will." 

"Good," Winston answers, pride sheening his voice bright. " _Good._ " 

"I gotta go, love, bit of an event I gotta go to," she tells Winston later on. Winston's grumbling laugh plays loud on the line and Lena can't help it when she laughs along, vibrations on her shoulders and her fingers. 

" _Mm. I figured you were keeping yourself busy. Being careful though, I hope_ _?_ " 

"You know me, most careful girl in the world!" 

" _I_ do  _know you,_ " grunts Winston fondly, " _and you are anything but._ " 

"We'll see each other soon, yeah?" Lena ventures quietly, clung vice-tight, knuckle-pale to the hope that bleeds out of her mouth. Winston hums. 

" _Very soon, Lena._ " 

She drops the call and looks up at the TV. Mondatta's face flashes in montages on the news. An appearance at King's Row, says the headline. 

She grabs her bracers. 

 

* * *

 

Widowmaker shows up. 

_Amélie shows up._

Tracer loses. 

_Lena gets in the way._

 

* * *

 

Winston sweeps Lena up in bear ( _gorilla?_ ) hug as soon as she walks into the lobby. Their laughter fills the emptiness of the Watchpoint enough to let them pretend it isn't rundown and dusty and that about half of the light bulbs in the whole building need replacing. Lena had been expecting some change, but really, there isn't any—Winston is still Winston, with his course fur and belly and breath that smells too much of peanut butter. "Did you get my postcards at all?" Lena asks him with a smile and a nudge to his arm. Winston hums.

"I didn't take you for the type to use your savings on travelling." 

Called it. 

"Oi, Athena! How's it been?" 

" _Uneventful, Lena,_ " comes Athena's answer, and if it was possible for an AI to sound bored, that's exactly how Athena sounds like. " _The Watchpoint has seen better days. Winston refuses to watch out for his health and cardi—_ "

"Moving on," Winston cuts off, snatching up Lena's backpack to carry as he leads. "Lena, how bad is the damage?" 

"Not... all that bad," Lena says uncertainly, to which Winston gives her a look. She shrugs. "It's functioning, at least. Bit of a crack is all there is as far as I know. I had a bit of help poking around there with some of the notes you gave me for maintenance and such." 

"We'll run tests to be sure. Athena?" 

" _The lab is prepared to receive you, Lena._ " 

Lena steps over a discarded jar of peanut butter on the ground and narrowly misses a scattered banana peel. "Really let the place go, didn't you, love?"

"There... was no point in maintaining it," Winston says with averted eyes, his tone flat. Louder, "watch out for debris in this hall. I haven't had the time to clean. I had some... guests very recently." 

"You throwing parties?" 

Winston's jawline goes rigid. "Talon." 

Lena's shock manifests in her tripping over a chunk of concrete on the floor. "Break in?" 

"Of the sorts," Winston confirms. "They were here to... _eliminate_ me. And to steal the depository of all known Overwatch agents and their current locations. Eliminate all of you in turn." 

"They've been active over at London, too." 

"The Oliver scandal?" 

"And... Mondatta," Lena says quietly. Winston makes a noise like he's not surprised. Lena lets her fists bunch at her side, jaw tight, a fire flaring deep in her sternum.

_Looks like the party is over._

"I was at the scene," she adds stiffly. "Did a good number on my accelerator, they did." 

"They were many?" 

"Just..."  _Adieu, cherié._ "One. One of 'em. Their sniper, I'm guessing." She breathes out steam. Doesn't think about it. Doesn't say more. 

Winston digests that with wrinkled brows. "They're everywhere. Their activities are more or less the same—gunrunning, stealing tech, assassinations. Angela was caught in the middle of an operation of theirs a few weeks back in Prague. Same approach as the Oliver scandal. They're hording armaments for whatever reason." 

"You been in touch with Ange? How is she?  _Where_ is she?" 

"Around," Winston answers smilingly. "She refused to tell even me, but she _did_ say she has been hopping cities and rendering her services for free, in places they most need it. She also has her research still, I think." 

"Still with the healing nanotech?" Lena asks. Winston nods. "Hardworking woman. Is she... will she be coming here?" 

Winston is quiet for a time. Athena turns on the lights for them in the lab, and Lena isn't at all shocked to see it's the only part of the Watchpoint she's seen so far that's pristine. Discarded tech parts litter the worktables but other than those, the area feels alive with years of activity. "One can hope," Winston says at length. "I haven't heard from the others." 

Lena says nothing more on the matter. She knows the drill in the lab, though. Without needing to be told, she drags a stool toward the correct workbench and sits with her back facing Winston. Winston sits too and proceeds to open a compartment on the accelerator to insert a jack into. "Athena?" he prompts, and Lena feels a vibration all around her chest. The light of her accelerator burns brighter. 

" _Running diagnostics,_ " Athena chirps, followed closely by, " _is this uncomfortable, Lena?_ " 

Lena feels herself smile. "It's fine, Athena, thanks." The vibration dribbles softer anyway. Her accelerator's light fluctuates with activity. "Hey, Winston?" 

"Yes?" 

"It's good to see you, love." 

Winston's breath showers hot on the nape of Lena's neck. He chuckles. "And you, Lena." 

"In a bit, this place will be crowded again," she says with enthusiasm, genuine, the unfailing, _you-can-count-on-it_ brand familiar to Tracer. Winston only hums. 

 _One can hope,_ he said. 

Lena hasn't run out of that yet. 

 

* * *

 

Angela arrives at Gibraltar after a run-in with Talon operatives at the Overwatch Museum. Which is, truth be told,  _bloody great timing_ , because Winston's got bruises and a busted up rib, and Lena thinks she sprained an ankle. 

"I mean, why am I not surprised?" Angela gripes, the three of them in the medbay amidst the mess of old, discarded medical supplies and dirt and nasts in the air. Lena toys with an old syringe with the sole of her good foot, rolling it back and forth. 

"You should be actually," she pipes up. "Didn't get a head injury this time." 

" _You must admit, Dr Ziegler, that in itself is quite a surprise._ " 

Angela manages to stop herself from chuckling. She could pull the no-nonsense doctor gig well before, too. "Need I always remind you," and she takes a deep breath to blow it out in an exasperated sigh, "that while we are duly trained, we are not invincible. Smart fighting is the best fighting." 

"Quiet healing is the best healing," Winston mumbles. He hisses when Angela prods his rib a little too hard. " _Oh,_ I _know_ you meant that." 

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Angela sniffs. "You must watch out for yourselves, whatever the situation. We can't keep _losing_ heroes." 

Winston fidgets. Lena draws her bottom lip into her mouth. 

"Maybe if you stayed with us, the chance of losing heroes would be... y'know, cut down," she tries. Winston lets his eyes go to Angela's face. Dour. Thoughtful. Concentrating. No-nonsense doctor and everything. 

"Why do you think I'm here?" Angela asks with a tender lightness coming to her tone at length. She looks Winston in the face, her smile slow to spread. " _I'm with you_ , big guy." 

 

Their number starts a slow increase after that. 

Torbjörn beats Reinhardt by mere minutes and they argue about it for hours ( _"Now, Winston, you know who's more eager to save the world!_ ") They go out on their little assignments still—low profile, or, as low profile as the four of them can manage, careful with who sees them and where they take their battles. Athena keeps them posted on Talon movements across the world, picking up information through the news and various infiltrated channels: police force, military, even select governments. 

Tracer has taken it upon herself to hold down a specific job. "I'll handle the sniper," she announces through the comms as she zips up the side of a building, hop-hop-hopping like a vertical rabbit, fingertips numbing with force and friction. It's an old, old game at this point. First to catch the other wins. 

" _Tracer, b_ _e carefu—_ " 

A light comes on in her periphery. Red. She blinks forward and the crate behind where her head was explodes with a gunshot. 

"Got it, _ta!_ " She surges forward with her pistols and sprays plasma like rain. The purple streak that is Widowmaker dashes eastward behind some water tanks. 

When she recharges her pistols, she does it in a slink of quick blinks to keep in motion. Widowmaker emerges from cover to deploy her graphook and zip to a higher platform. Tracer follows her to the next building with much less ease. 

"Can't run from me, love," she grunts. She grasps the ledge with both hands and launches into a vault. 

And that's when the purple smoke explodes in front of her face. 

Tracer chokes on a lungful and momentum throws her forward, stumbling and then slipping and sliding. She slams her elbow on the concrete and flails, eyes watering, ribs constricting. 

"Who said anything about running?" Widowmaker sneers above her. Tracer hears the rifle cock. She throws herself to the side automatically and sure enough, the shot shatters the space on the ground where she was mere seconds ago. 

She primes the accelerator and closes her eyes. She recalls. Blood reels backward. Air ejects from her lungs. Steps wind back, back, _back_ , until she's vaulting over the ledge again at a different angle. Her heart  _bang-bangs_ in her chest like struck drums in shock. 

"I'll admit, that was my fault," she huffs, pistols flipping to her hands. "Keep falling for that. Not again, though." 

"We'll see," Widowmaker drawls. They raise weapons in unison. The firefight continues. 

They dance, and dance, and  _dance._

 

* * *

 

Lena glosses through the documents with a critical eye. Hana Song, Lucio Correia Dos Santos, Aleksandra Zaryanova. Only the last of them has actual military training—the other two, only their tech is particularly impressive. Lena glances up at Angela with a crease between her eyebrows. 

"A kid? And a DJ?" she asks, halfway scandalized. "We having a party, love?" 

"They're supposedly more capable than they seem. Song has had proper Meka training," Angela says but Lena can pick up the colors of uncertainty in her voice. "She and Zaryanova are to be considered intermediaries for their countries. Santos works independent of the channel of his government, but has the same intentions. 

"They're support from their states," she sees fit to add when Lena says nothing. "We're far from legitimate, but we're attracting allies." 

"Maybe they never should've shut us down in the first place," Lena says, not quite a retort because it lacks edge. A sad observation, she decides. She piles up the papers and hands them back to Angela. "I was nineteen when I first got a taste of the action, too." 

"So you concur?" 

Lena shrugs and looks out the window of the medbay. The watchpoint garden is in shambles, more brown than green, dirt more than foliage. "The world could always use more heroes. You know me." 

 

The Gibraltar Watchpoint fills up with operatives and staff, all either independent or intermediaries: all working under the radar. 

Jesse is welcomed by Lena with a less-than-subtle crack at his old hat (" _Real funny, doll, real funny._ ") Angela brings Genji Shimada, smiling with fondness and familiarity. Zenyatta is the only new one in the recent fray, face like his brother, voice like his brother. Lena helps him in his efforts to revive the garden every morning with Genji assisting every once in a while. 

"I'm sorry about your brother," Lena tells Zenyatta one morning, the two of them picking weeds off the soil. Morning sun beats gentle on the back of Lena's exposed neck. 

"It was unfortunate," Zenyatta says with a distinguishing sadness to his voice. "But if we are to cling to our misfortunes forever, we risk stagnation." 

"He was a good guy." 

"Good," he agrees, "but superficial." 

Lena reels back. She raises her eyebrows. "Sorry?" 

"He sought to change the world through teachings alone," Zenyatta starts as he bends over, gathering the pulled up weeds to dump in a basket. He hums. "How can change happen without action? You do not teach a young boy to walk by telling him the beauties of walking and travel, for instance. You teach him with guidance. You walk so that he may see you. To teach him, you hold him by the hand and move him with you," he says with a glance up at Lena. Reaching forward, he grasps Lena by the wrist and guides her hand to where there are more weeds. "This is what he failed to understand. 

"But I do not hate him. We had the same cause in the end, my brother and I. It is the differences in how we chose to advocate this cause that created the rift. He mistook the human and omnic mind to be as opened as his. He lacked in that he failed in trying to understand how mankind functions." 

"I was there," Lena says at length. "I intervened. Tried to... chase the assassin away." 

"Not kill them?" 

"What?" 

"Not kill the assassin?" Zenyatta asks, tone pensive. He looks at Lena. One problem with the omnics is the difficulty to tell what they're feeling, what they're thinking, with looking at them alone. Lena swallows, shrugs slowly. "Interesting wording." 

"Should I have tried to?" she asks quietly. She pictures Amélie at the back of her mind—Widowmaker shatters the image with her cold, cold smile. 

"If you did not feel the need to, then maybe not." Zenyatta's hands have a certain surety with their work and this extends to his words, the smooth, certain delivery of his responses. "With all that is happening in the world, even heroes forget killing is not the path to peace." 

Lena says nothing. She pulls off a handful of weeds and dumps them into Zenyatta's basket.

Later, during an assignment, Zenyatta watches Lena purposefully shoot Genji's shuriken off its path. Widowmaker bristles, mere yards from where the shot was intercepted, and uses her graphook to move to higher cover. Genji grunts his confusion— _where did that shot come from, Genji hardly misses, Genji gets the job done_ —and picks up pursuit. 

They meet eyes, Lena and Zenyatta. 

Zenyatta says nothing of it, even long after the assignment is finished. 

Lena doesn't want to admit she's avoiding him. 

 

* * *

 

Come Christmas, Lena takes Emily to Gibraltar. She's never been there, she's said once, and the two of them spend the better half of the first day of their arrival cruising the city and taking pictures. Lena knows the place like the back of her hand by now— _search parties, a missing woman, stone-cold grief_ —and takes Emily to where the scenes look like they're taken straight out of postcards and tourism ads. 

Winston is happy to have one Christmas with company (" _Athena's a good companion, but she prattles about my health and exercise too much._ ") He cleans the place up while they cook and helps them set up small decorations. At dinner, he and Emily talk Physics and connected sciences, speaking in languages nearly foreign while Lena sits idly by, feeling like a linguist stuck in Maths. 

Emily is happy, at least, and Winston is giddy to show her  _the advanced stuff,_ such is his wording. He invites her over to his lab for a viewing of his most recent prototypes of various inventions. 

"Em, they're prone to exploding. Don't come too close no matter what he tells you," Lena stage-whispers in jest. Winston looks at her with feigned hurt. 

"I'll have you know, failure is the foundation of all breakthroughs!" 

" _Many failures, apparently,_ " Athena adds coolly. 

Lena leaves them to it and retreats to the lounge room. Cup of cocoa in hand and a record playing in the corner, classical music, pianos and things, she stares at the modest, plastic Christmas tree they've set up in the middle of the room. She watches its lights blink on and off, changing colors. Gold, then purple, then back again. 

 

Snow is heavy in the Swiss Alps. Tracer yells profanities into the comms as she sinks to her knees behind a jutting boulder, enemy fire raining from the other side. The blizzard rushes forceful. " _I can't see anything!_ " D.Va squeals on the line, the panic in her voice too apparent for everyone's comfort. The rest of the team echo the sentiment. 

" _We have to fall back!_ " Jesse howls. In the background, Tracer hears Genji say something like  _my leg, I'm hit, my leg,_ and she yells for instructions, cheek and forehead sore from the snowstorm. It picks up with a frightening whistle of wind. 

" _We need to gather! It will be easy to get lost in this blizzard,_ " Mercy shouts. More urgently, she calls out, " _Pharah!_ " 

" _Everyone look up for my flare!_ " 

Tracer does. The shape of Pharah ascends to the sky, a speck of color amidst the gray static of the snowstorm. Fareeha Amari, the daughter of Ana, brave like her mother with the Amari heart of the undying soldier. She unleashes two flares—a white one, the decoy for Talon, launched toward a direction far off and a second orange one she fires as she descends. 

" _I see it!_ — _come, Genji!_ " Torbjörn grunts. 

Tracer moves. She trudges through with tall strides, the snow dense and thick and  _high_ , reaching to almost her knees standing up. She doesn't blink because the blizzard may be strong but her anchor is stronger, flashing blue lights that may as well be bullseyes. Gunfire still sounds above the howl of the tempest and she carries on with a ducked head, goggles scratched gray and silver with snow. She keeps her jaws ground shut to keep them from chattering. 

Her joints feel frozen up and she can't see anything, and it shows when she couldn't flip her pistols to her hands and doesn't dodge the attack in time. A Talon grunt in uniform hits her up the chin with his rifle and she reels back, shouting expletives. Her pistols flip, finally. She raises them and fires blindly forward. 

The retort comes in the form of a grenade. A flash of gold paints the blizzard's gray for the briefest moment, a burst of fire that laps up the tip of her nose and her outstretched hands. The ground underfoot rumbles with the disturbance and she hears herself screaming when the snow starts to give around her. 

They shout her name in unison in the comms and all she can do is scream again.

She collapses forward, knees hitting first before her chest. She scrambles, swims in the receding snow, elbows grinding raw with cold and hard effort and shoots an arm forward to claw into the nearest possible thing to catch her. 

The blizzard whistles. She feels dizzy. She feels a wrist under her fingers and nails biting into the curve of her thumb. 

" _Don't let go,_ " someone hisses above the snowstorm. Tracer answers in a wordless cry. The hand around her wrist is bare,  _cold_ like the snow, like the blizzard, like guns and winter pavements. Like the  _dead._ She continues to slide, vertical,  _downward_ , the snow grinding against her body. 

Widowmaker's face emerges from the rushing gray. A brush of blood stains her cheekbone, fresh and red. Tracer sees Widowmaker's rifle slide past her and fall into the abyss that's opened up below. " _Don't. Let. Go,_ " Widowmaker growls, ferocious, steadfast, another hand coming down to grab the elbow of the arm she's holding in place. 

Strain makes Tracer whine feebly, arm muscles stretched taut with the weight of her whole body, suspended over the abyss. Widowmaker tries to pull her up but the snow is still slipping, still falling, the ground under her slanting, and she makes her own sound of distress when she slips forward, and Tracer slips downward. 

"Don't let go!" Tracer shouts now, too, and with a look of hard steel, cold and blank, Widowmaker doesn't. 

The blizzard howls. The snow around them rumbles and slides. 

They fall into the abyss together. 

 

Widowmaker is staring at her when she comes to. 

Or, she isn't exactly sure. She blinks away blurs and white spots, her vision nothing more than vague outlines and spilled colors. It's cold. Below her, her legs burn with an ache's fire. Her head pounds and she doesn't have to check to know the dried patch she feels on her temple is blood. When she moves her arms, she feels pricking needles. 

She checks again, halfway better than seconds ago. A little more conscious. Widowmaker is staring at her _chest_ when she comes to. 

Watching the accelerator strapped to her sternum, busted and barely clinging, bits of metal clawed off by rocks no doubt, and the impact of the fall. Its light is feeble. Fluctuating, bright and then dim, _taunting_ , like the bare bouncing of a lifeline. Her hands shake when she reaches up to touch the contraption that's keeping her pinned to this reality. She feels her heart hammer against her ribs. 

"Now I owe you nothing," mutters her companion. She looks up, watches Widowmaker blink blearily at the accelerator. She has cuts on her face and one of her cheeks is swollen maroon. Next to her is her rifle, shattered into two. 

Lena still has her pistols in her bracers. She could feel them humming with charge around her wrists. 

"What?" she asks stupidly, throat sore, voice scratchy. Widowmaker deems it fit to look her in the face this time. 

"Now I owe you nothing," she repeats, as flatly as she said it the first time. Lena watches her eyelashes flutter with exhaustion, weak light riding the decadent curve of her nose. Above them is the hole they fell into, gifting gray light, just enough to let them see each other. Around them are rocks and snow. Widowmaker's skin is lavender in the luminescence. 

"I... don't—" 

"The cyborg," Widowmaker cuts off, annoyance coloring her tone like she can't _believe_ she has to explain it. "You intercepted the cyborg's shot. That was meant to incapacitate me. Perhaps slowly. Perhaps for good." 

 _Perhaps for good._ The blase delivery shocks a shaky breath out of Lena. She shuts her eyes. 

"A _thank you_ would've sufficed, love," she says with a surprising dose of sarcasm. She hears Widowmaker scoff. 

"I think not." 

She scoffs in turn and tilts her head up to look at the hole above them. A long fall. She can make out the blizzard, slow to ebb. She tries her comm to no avail—all she gets is bursting static. 

"We've been cut off," Widowmaker supplies knowingly. "The blizzard. Perhaps the closure at this level. I can't contact anyone as well." 

Lena sighs at that. She leans back and settles with watching the light of her accelerator. Her body is trembling. 

"You're cold," Widowmaker observes. Lena hums quietly. "I can't help you on that front." 

"Why think to help me at all?" Lena snaps, tongue lit with fire in spite of her body. In spite of her head. In spite of her _heart,_ thumping in brisk drumbeats, aching and dreading and hoping all at once. She looks up to see Widowmaker's expression hasn't changed, but sparkles of amusement glint in her eyes. 

"You sound angry,  _cherié,_ " Widowmaker says and the amusement in her eyes flows well to her tongue. Lena feels herself scowl. "Is this what heroes know of gratitude?" 

"This is what heroes know of  _fury_ ," she fires back. "You killed Mondatta." 

Widowmaker hums. Her lips stretch to smile, but the lights of humor go out in her eyes. She is cold, inside, outside,  _everywhere._ "I killed many." 

" _Why?_ " 

"Because I was told to," is her answer, as simply as saying  _the sky is blue, grass is green, blood is red._

Lena feels air ball up in her throat and the familiar sting of tears welling up behind her eyeballs. Her head pounds with injury and the stress of this encounter both. She swallows once, twice, before saying, "that was your cause." 

Widowmaker tilts her head, a curious animal. Lena doesn't have to try _at all_ to see _Amelié_ in the gesture. She licks her lips, tries again. "What Mondatta was standing up for. Humans and omnics coexisting. Peace. Equality. Love.  _Kindness._ " She looks up and her breath comes out of her hard. "That was  _your_ cause." 

The quiet hovers over them like a ghostly crown. Widowmaker's face is blank, a slate wiped clean and polished. It makes Lena so  _angry_ —the anger of losing and losing and _losing_ , the anger she feels toward herself for giving up, stop calling this woman before _Amélie_  in the battlefield, because,  _because,_ maybe she really  _is_ dead—that she shouts, "that was what you  _taught_ me!" 

"You are not a child anymore," Widowmaker answers calmly. _Calm_ like the trepidation after a raging storm but the dark clouds have yet to leave. When she looks up, it's to stare through Lena. "Amélie is dead." 

"You're right in front of me, Amélie." 

That gets something out of Widowmaker. Anger. Hate.  _Danger._ Quick, the spark of fire off a blade, a flash of lightning, a gunshot in the dark, there and gone again when she refocuses on Lena. Lena watches her throat bob with a swallow. "Amélie is dead," she says, louder, her edge sharper. "There is no use for Amelié in this world. There never _was_ use for her." 

"Don't say that—" 

"You are  _deluded_ ," Widowmaker spits, lips peeling back and teeth baring, her jaw shaking with each syllable. "Amélie was useless. A pretty woman for display. She is  _dead._ " 

" _Stop it—_ " 

"You did not know her _enough_ ,  _chérie,_ " she goes on to say. Her words are talons digging into Lena's skin, scratching and breaking her bones, tearing her to pieces. "You did not know her enough to know  _this is the truth._ " 

Lena flips her pistols to her hands and raises to aim, breathing hard, teeth grit and bared. A wounded animal—a  _provoked_ animal. The pulse pistols' charges hum with plasma waiting to be unleashed and Widowmaker only laughs in her face. Laughs long, loud, and humorless. She rears back to smile and it is catlike, eyes almost shut with the lift of her cheeks. 

"Will you kill me now?" she asks, like a parent would a child.  _Is this the toy you want? Is this what you want?_ "Kill me. Be the _hero_. Be the big girl stepping on the spider." 

Lena's arms shake. She does not lower the pistols. Neither does she fire. 

Widowmaker scoffs, turns her head to the side to stare at a wall of rocks and snow. She shifts, grunts only ever so slightly with difficulty. She pulls her legs up. Lena watches her legs curl, the muscles under her thighs vibrating with effort, her hand going to one of her calves. 

It's the broken one. The foot is gone, snapped off, _completely_ , and on the jagged stump of disconnection Lena sees only bent steel and wires. Cybernetics. 

Prosthetics.

"Your legs," she murmurs, heart punching to her throat. Widowmaker looks up at her, and then down at her legs, and chuckles icily. 

And Lena starts to cry. 

"They took your legs," she whispers, eyes wide with horror, tears rushing down her cheeks, pistols still raised and shaking violently in the air. "They took your  _legs,_ Amé, they took—" 

"Stop." 

"—you used to  _dance,_ do you remember?" And Lena is rambling now, pistols flipping back. She slaps her hands to her mouth and hiccups behind them, eyes shutting and sobbing  _no no no_ through her fingers. "You danced  _so well,_ you danced in theaters, you  _danced_ and people  _watched_ you dance and _I_ watched you dance—" 

"Quiet," Widowmaker whispers, barely above their breathing, barely above Lena's reckless sobbing. " _No more._ " 

Lena's sinuses click and she ducks, pressing her hands harder over her mouth. Her shoulders quake. The chill filtering in from the hole above them is making her legs numb and her elbows heavy but she only cries. 

"It is monstrous, no?" 

"You're not—you—you're  _not_ a monster. You're kind. You're funny. You're sweet, you're talented, you're—" 

"I have killed people," Widowmaker says with a chilling lack of feeling. 

"You are  _not_ —" 

" _It is the actions that define the being_ ," she further adds, said like she's reciting from memory—and she is, _she is,_ Lena knows she  _is_. Talking to the wall, to no one at all, as if Lena wasn't there breathing and living and crying. "I have killed people," she says with damning finality. A quiet acceptance of death. A dying man's empty look up at hospital lights. 

"You're not,  _you're not,_ " Lena mutters like a prayer, again and again under her breath, the image of Amélie flashing behind her eyelids on and off like gold and purple Christmas lights. "You're still in there,  _you are_ , please come home—" 

"To where?" Widowmaker challenges. Lena opens her eyes. "There is no place for me besides behind a  _gun._ " 

"Come home," Lena says anyway.  _To me,_ she wants to say, but doesn't. Widowmaker gives her a look like acid, like poison, like death at the hands of the widow. 

" _Lena!_ " 

" _Lena?_ " 

Widowmaker starts. She drags herself further back in the hole, drawing her legs closer to her with a hiss that better belongs to a beast. She glares at Lena and Lena glances up, stares at the hole where—"Lena!  _Lena answer us!_ "—just above she can hear Angela and the others. 

She sniffs, pulls herself up to her knees. "I'm..." She coughs, tries again. " _I'm over here! Down here!_ " 

" _Lena!_ " 

Widowmaker makes another hissing sound as she retreats into the shadows. Lena reaches toward her but she growls, eyes cut like flaming golden orbs in the dim. "Amé—" 

" _Do not touch me,_ " Widowmaker whispers, fierce, one hand feeling for the nearest object it can reach. She settles with a jagged chunk of broken rock and raises it in defense. Lena recoils. 

" _Lena?_ " A shape pokes into the hole. Angela's voice carries down to the bottom. "Lena? Are you okay?" 

"I'm—I'm fine, Ange, just a little busted up!" 

 _A little,_ she hears Angela scoff before, "we're coming down!" 

"No!" Lena blurts out at the same time Widowmaker bristles. "I—it's  _cramped_ in here, just... just throw me a rope or sommat!" 

Widowmaker is quiet as she watches. A bundle of rope is thrown down, stretched taut when Lena pulls and the others at the other end do the same. When Lena turns to look at her, she turns away and stares at an earth wall. 

"Talon will be coming, too," she whispers. "I want you  _gone_ before they arrive." 

Lena doesn't answer. She shouts the all-set and she's pulled up. Widowmaker does not look at her again. 

 

* * *

 

Ana looks at Lena like Lena just spat on everything she stands for. Ana probably thinks so—Lena likes to think she hasn't. Lena likes to think this is the  _right thing._

She  _believes_ this is the right thing. 

"She is a  _criminal_ , Lena," Ana reiterates. Lena has lost count of how many times Ana has already said this. "If it is  _true_ she is conscious, Amélie as Widowmaker,  _Widowmaker as Amélie_ , then she should be duly punished!" 

"I  _didn't_ say she's to be excused for everything she's done! All I've been saying is we need to take her home! Have her here, help her with her condition, see what Ange can do about what Talon's done to her—" 

"She is  _dangerous._ She should be  _put down_ —" 

" _Ana_ ," Soldier 76 snaps in warning, but Ana powers past him with a scowl. 

" _Put. Down_ ," she maintains. Her wrinkles run deep with age, with emotion, with the damning stubbornness very particular to Ana Amari. "A—a  _monster_ like that mustn't be allowed to prowl  _so freely_ any longer—" 

"She is  _not_ a monster," Lena spits, fighting to keep her voice even. She respects Ana. She tells herself this.  _Reminds_ herself this. Ana was there before she ever was. She meets Ana's glare with one of her own. "Talon took her. Talon did something to her and we need to  _help_ her! I only ask that she be given the chance to be _saved_. Rehabilitation—"

"Your _feelings_ are in the way of your doing your job, _Tracer_ ," Ana snaps. Next to her, Lena senses Fareeha's posture go rigid. Lena swallows. She advances, but Angela pulls her back with a hand on her forearm and Soldier similarly yanks Ana back when she starts to move, too. In the corner of the office, Zenyatta stands with Genji, motionless and ultimately wordless. Winston looks ready to spring at the first sign of undue violence. 

"My _feelings_ have saved lives," Lena says, hard and loud, a sword coming down on concrete. She shakes Angela's hand off and takes a step forward, just one. "My feelings have allowed me to never  _ever_ leave anyone behind. My feelings are what have made me a _hero_ , Ana."

To everyone else in the room, she says, "we  _owe_ her," before walking away. 

"You don't know her, Lena!" Ana sees fit to shout after her and Soldier's voice mingles with hers, telling her  _stop,_ telling her  _calm down._ " _You don't know the person she is!_ " 

Lena heads straight to the shooting range to shoot until her arms are tired. 

 

* * *

 

Emily takes one look at the file and her face pinches, one breath going out of her unsteadily. Lena looks at her hands as the rustle of papers sounds in front of her, Emily picking up the dossier and going through it with cautious fingers, cautious eyes. 

" _Amélie Lacroix_ ," she reads aloud after a pregnant silence. "Now known as  _Widowmaker._ " 

"It's everything we could get on her," Lena supplies. "From encounters, from Athena's digging, from what we could make of Talon's documents in our hands." 

"You found her." 

Lena glances up at Emily. Emily's closed the file, has set it on the tabletop and is looking at it like it'll tell her  _why, when, how._

"You wouldn't show me this if this didn't mean anything." 

Lena keeps her eyes on Emily even though Emily isn't doing the same to her. She watches the muscles of Emily's jaw flex, ripple, pull taut: the too-quick flutter of her eyelashes and bobs of her throat. She keeps at it, because Emily deserves to be looked at, and she deserves to  _see._

"I..." She stops because Emily turns to look at her abruptly. "I need to be there. For her. Once we take her back. I need to keep watch." 

Emily hums and nods her head. "Do you love me at all?" 

" _Of course I—_ " 

"But you feel for her too, don't you?" Emily observes gently. Lena almost wants to be yelled at. Called a bloody wanker. Maybe punched, for good measure. "You love _too much_. I feel like I've always known." 

"I'm sorry, I—" 

"Please don't say you never meant to," Emily cuts off and Lena clenches her fists, looks down at the tabletop, feels the apartment close in on her, wrap around her,  _crush_ her. She breathes in clammy air. "Because I  _know_ it'll be the truth and that's much worse." 

Emily sniffs delicately. Wet, shaky. Her chair grinds against the floorboards ugly and Lena knows better than to follow her. 

"Don't talk to me again, Lena." 

When Emily walks out of Lena's apartment, Lena only wishes she doesn't come back. She knows what happens to those who try to come back. 

 

Tracer is given her job and she does it. She zips along, leaving her streak of blue light, jumping from rooftop to rooftop. It's an old, old game. 

D.Va has eyes from the ground and her Meka dutifully follows as Tracer jumps buildings. Mercy trails behind. Somewhere, Genji is hiding with his brother Hanzo, their weapons armed and dangerous: something for Widowmaker's blood, as provided by Angela, and something for Widowmaker's body, as contributed by Winston. It'll shock her to immobility and put her to sleep, they said. A whole team effort, months of gathering information, months more of testing and perfecting. 

Tracer narrowly misses a shot to her legs. She swerves and moves toward the gunshot. _It's an old, old game._

They're too old for games. 


	6. ;

Widowmaker fights. She thrashes and writhes, screaming anger and hatred and  _murder_ , held down on a gurney, eyes wide and teeth bared. "Sedate her," Winston tells Angela, his huge hands on her slim arms. Angela does. It takes a while to. 

It takes so, so long because of her body. Because of her blood and heartbeat. Because of Talon. 

Ana and Soldier 76 have left the Watchpoint by then. It's how they work, Angela says. They come when needed or when they want. Lena sees how tense Fareeha is, though. Sees the clench of her fists and the ripples of her muscles as she bites into that punching bag again and again and  _knows_ Ana won't be showing up for a while. 

Lena goes out on assignments because Angela tells her,  _not yet_ , and waits around the watchpoint when she has none. Hana and Lucio are good company—they're young and know good distractions for those who need them. 

"You guys are real close, huh?" Hana says one day, face bottomlit by her phone, held sideways for a videogame. They're more receptive to the idea of reforming Widowmaker, her and Lucio—less antsy about it than the older operatives anyway. 

"We were in the same orphanage together. Got... pretty close, yeah." 

"She danced, right?" 

"Mm." 

"Have you seen her perform?" 

Hana's already turned her phone around to show Lena the video before the answer could come. Amélie on stage, dancing her heart away.  _The Dying Swan_ is the title: a poignant scene from  _Swan Lake._

"They called her the _Maya Plisetskaya_ of her generation," Hana says. "People loved her." 

Lena wants to say she loved Amélie's dancing before they ever did. 

Nights pass with her night light. 

 

It's days before Angela allows her to visit. 

Amélie doesn't look at her when she ambles in. Angela had warned her about that (" _you might find her to be unresponsive, but that's just her. Her vitals are fine. Don't force her into anything_ ") and Lena only shrugs as she takes a seat next to the bed. Amélie remains still, mattress inclined so she could look out the window. 

"How you feeling, love?" Lena asks. Amélie doesn't respond, unsurprisingly. Lena pushes on just for the hell of it. "Ange told me you've been eating at least, so that's good. You hurting anywhere at all?" 

Amélie says nothing. Lena sees her eyelashes flutter as she blinks at the window, slow, maybe tired, maybe meaningless. She decides to shut up after that and just looks in the same direction. 

The garden looks better now. Zenyatta is communing with Genji along the flowerbeds. Shrubs swoon with the breeze, daylight sheening them gold-green. 

Lena wonders, for a moment, how it would feel to walk with Amélie there. 

"Wasn't that nice when we first came back here," she supplies idly. "Took us months to fix it up and, well, make it look like  _that_ again." 

"You shouldn't have brought me here." 

Lena starts, looks at Amélie although Amélie won't do the same to her. Amélie's voice is all kinds of tired—all kinds of hopeless, all kinds of old. Lena leans forward, hands coming up to rest on the mattress. "Why not?" 

"I don't belong here," Amélie says. 

"And you belong with Talon?" 

She looks at Lena now, the first time since Lena came in. Her lips twitch, curl into a frown. "I belong with criminals." 

"We've killed people, too." 

"For reasons very different from mine," Amélie retorts with narrowed eyes. "I shouldn't be here." 

"Where should you be?" 

"I  _can't_ be here." 

"Where do you  _want_ to be?" 

Amélie goes quiet. On her lap, her hands furl into fists, sheets crumpling under her fingers. She turns to look out the window again. "I don't know what I want." 

Lena nods. "That's fair," she mutters. 

They speak no more for the next hour. 

 

* * *

 

Amélie will participate, sometimes. Say something in reply to Lena's questions— _do you need anything, should I call Angela, does it hurt anywhere_ —but Lena thinks it's mostly to get her to shut up, which she never does anyway. It's the fear, she thinks,  _when_ she thinks about it. She needs to hear Amélie talk. The same way she needs the night light to know she's still here, after a nightmare. The same way she needs the accelerator in the first place. 

She needs to know Amélie is  _here._

She stays for hours sometimes. Sometimes only minutes, because Angela needs to do some checkups or she's booked for an assignment to some far off side of the planet again. She'll be gone for weeks, _months_ , rarely, but whenever she comes back, Amélie is the same. 

Unresponsive.  _Spiteful_ , quietly. Her skin shines mauve in the sterile light of the medbay but her eyes are always on the window. Her heartbeat, Angela said. Alterations done to her biology—a severe form of cyanosis, too little oxygen pumping in her bloodstream, too slow a heartbeat, too little  _life_  to radiate heat. Satya has built her new prostheses to replace her Talon-brand ones. For safety, they'd told Amélie, because Talon could be tracking her through them. 

"Have you tried my head?" is what she told them in turn. Angela had paused because they haven't. Paused because they probably should. 

Lena sat outside the operating room for hours. 

 

"Do you want to go out to the garden?" Lena asks one day, bandages still around Amélie's head and her meal tray empty on the bedside. For a moment, Amélie says nothing like maybe she didn't hear. 

"Will I be allowed to?" she answers at length. 

Lena goes to check. Winston allows it ultimately, but Lena can't help her grimace when they find Reinhardt and Jesse on clear guard when they come out. Jesse has the decency to spare Lena a small smile, halfway apologetic, halfway wry. Reinhardt does not look in their direction at all. 

Amélie ignores them. She walks before Lena. Slow, sure steps, slow,  _testing_ steps, Satya's creations new to her body and every now and then, Lena would see her almost trip or twitch like her legs have locked up. She'll help, of course, and Amélie is wordless each time. 

Zenyatta is there, tending to the flowers when they reach the flowerbeds. He looks up to them and waves, and Lena feels had he a more expressive face, he'd be smiling. He would've been the first to really smile at Satya too, at that. 

"Good morning," he says, looking to Lena first and then Amélie. He gestures for them to come closer which they do, with a bit of reassurance from Lena on Amélie's part. "Do you like flowers, Amélie?" he asks once they're close enough, and the simplicity of her name slipping from Zenyatta's voice box shocks Amélie enough that her legs lock up again. Zenyatta helps her kneel down. 

"I... did," Amélie says cautiously. "Do. I do." 

"Flowers are beautiful," Zenyatta says by way of approval. "One of the purest things in the world. They do not care who holds them or cares for them. They grow for everyone." 

Amélie goes back to the medbay with a batch of white lilies. Lena keeps them in a container of water, and Amélie settles them at her bedside. 

They speak little still. 

 

* * *

 

One particularly humid day in the garden, Amélie speaks to Lena. 

"I lived across a flower shop here," she says suddenly, sunhat (a gift from Mei, given with a wide smile and met with a stone face) sheening her face with shadow as she goes through the motions of tending to the flowers. Zenyatta had taught her enough. Water them, but not too much. Snip the browning buds off, snip overgrown leaves, pull out the weeds if there are any. Her hands move slower than Zenyatta's but they work as surely. Trying hard. 

"You did," is all Lena could get out with her surprise. Amélie hums and her gloves make thwacking sounds when she claps dirt off of them. 

"I loved their white roses," Amélie adds. 

"You told me you had a studio behind it." 

Amélie's hands freeze like her legs used to when they were still new. "I did," she mutters, hands returning to their ministrations. "I taught children." 

"Did you enjoy it?" 

Amélie seems to ponder that for a moment. "I did. Very much." And then much later, "more than I ever did Birmingham and Paris." 

Surprise colors Lena's voice. She leans so that she may see Amélie better but Amélie turns away to tend to some flowers in that direction. It's seamless: Lena can't decide if she did it on purpose. "More than doing your shows? Why?" 

In the distance, Reinhardt is laughing with Torbjörn. Amélie's guards for the day. Amélie only turns back to Lena's direction to look at the two of them blankly, and something about the way her lips purse tell Lena that's all for today. 

 

"I like children." 

Lena still can't get the hang of the gardening thing. She's frowning down at a bed of sunflowers and a poor little sunflower bud she accidentally snipped. "Children are the best, yeah? Although, some of them can be pretty bad jerks. I've met a couple who just don't know their manners, I have— _oh, bloody hell, sorry little guy..._ " 

"I think I was thinking of having some of my own then." 

Lena looks up at Amélie. "With Gér?" she asks. Amélie hums. 

"Ideally." Lena nods. "I killed him." 

"I know." 

"You do?" 

"Ana... told us," Lena says, treading carefully. Amélie's face stays as impassive as when they came into the garden. "She investigated. Did some digging after—" 

"I took her eye." 

"Yeah," Lena agrees, settling with that. 

The sun blazes overhead. Their guards are quieter this time in the persons of Fareeha and Zarya. They observe without seeming invading. It's familiar then, the way they chat by themselves and don't mind Amélie there—it's familiar how Lena is the only one who talks to Amélie. 

_haven't got the hang of the old English yet have you_

_oh no no don't mean anything by it_

_we are roommates mm_

"I was not a good person," Amélie says at length. Lena pulls herself from the memory to set her jaw at Amélie. 

"You were. I remember you were. You were sweet and talented, Amé. You loved things. Dancing, for one. You could be like that again." 

"Sometimes,  _chérie,_ I wonder whether you say those things for _you_ or for _me_." 

Lena feels herself flinch. Amélie does not look at her again for the rest of the day. 

 

* * *

 

The lilies were on the floor. There was water everywhere.  _There was blood everywhere._

Amélie used a shard from the glass container. Athena alerted them too late. Lena was still on the flight back from an assignment in Russia. 

Genji was _fast_ —Genji was the first on the scene. He and Winston carried her to the emergency room where Angela prepared with a steady breath and just the tiniest shake to her hands. She closed off the medical corridor for the rest of the day and had Jesse keep watch. Ana was there to witness the scene with Soldier and watched Amélie get wheeled in quietly. She sent her daughter to tell Lena on arrival. 

Lena sits her shock out in the mess hall as Fareeha tells her.

She dreams of night skies and skins like night skies and the cold of them seeping into her bones. She dreams of watching people die and dying. 

When she wakes, she stares at her night light until the sun comes up. 

 

* * *

 

Amélie doesn't like the garden anymore. She asks Winston herself if she could get her air elsewhere—the  _terrace_ , she says she was hoping, where she could see the watchpoint grounds and the city in the distance. She misses seeing things other than sterile rooms and flowers, she says. 

Winston was anxious of it, naturally, but Jesse reminds him that Amélie used to like coming up to the terrace. Used to wait for Gérard up there if not at the lobby, chatting with Angela or smoking with Jesse or just by herself, reading a book. Winston remembers, of course, but he asks Angela first. 

Angela asks Lena, and Lena tells them, "I'll be sure to come up with her." 

So Lena does once they allow it. She walks with Amélie. Her, pointedly avoiding looking at the bandages on Amélie's wrists. Amélie, avoiding saying anything. 

For the moment. 

"I always hoped you would gather up the nerve to shoot me whenever we found each other in the battlefield," Amélie says so simply Lena could almost imagine she just said something about the weather, or how the watchpoint looks better, or how the city looks so serene from up here. "I even tried to gather up your nerves for you. I tried very hard." 

"Very hard," Lena agrees after some thought. Her fingers flex around the railing, uncertain with this line of conversation but going with it. She treads careful, light footing, look-both-ways-before-crossing. "Always gave me something to bitch about whenever I got home. You  _are_ bigger than me." 

Amélie only hums. When she grasps the railing and leans just a little bit forward, Lena feels herself twitch. Amélie is looking at the garden below them. 

"Did you... really like it?" Lena ventures at length. A zephyr rolls past them. Amélie's ponytail slides off her shoulder and hangs on her back, dark like evenings, like the abyss up at the Swiss Alps. 

"What?"

"Killing."

"It was better than the alternative," Amélie says blankly, eyelashes fluttering slow.

"Which was?"

"Doing nothing. Trapped." 

She hikes herself a little more forward and Lena _can't_ take it anymore. Lena reaches out to wind her fingers around Amélie's closest hand, pin her to the terrace, ground her to the floor. Amélie pauses to look at it—Lena's hand, so pale, freckled, the kind to burn more than tan—but her expression doesn't change. She's cold, Lena realizes belatedly. Cyanosis. Too little blood, too little breaths, too little life. 

"I don't belong here." 

"Then where do you belong?"

"Where all the bad things go," Amélie says and there's a lilt now, a flicker of something in her voice. Feeling. Emotion. Pain. Lena's eyes go to the bandages around her wrists. "I hoped to die." 

"You can't." 

"For you, or for me?" 

Lena's face scrunches and her eyes go elsewhere of their own volition. Amélie removes her hand from under Lena's and all at once, with the shadows on Amélie's face and the wind in her hair, and the way she avoids meeting eyes and clasps her own hands together, and that slow flutter of her eyelashes, the purse of her lips, the subtle flex of a muscle on her jaw, the familiarity of that thoughtful gleam in her eyes and the too-quiet moments, _even back then_ , Lena realizes maybe she doesn't know Amélie that well. 

Maybe she doesn't know enough, or at all. 

Maybe that Amélie in her head is just  _an Amélie in her head_ and there are things years change and twist and break. 

"I'm sorry." It's out of her mouth before she could build the rest after it, her mouth dry and throat filling with air. 

"For what?"

"For being selfish." 

Amélie looks at her and her face is inscrutable. She waits. Lena carries on. "I liked it. Being with you. Too much. Scared that— _that_ —I'd ruin it. Lose you. Be alone. I..." She shuts her eyes, breathes fierce through her teeth and sucks her tongue against them. "I didn't care about anything else. I was scared to...  _to..._ " 

"To ask," Amélie finishes for her. "I think I was scared to answer, too." 

"We're not children anymore," Lena whispers, and she feels something break, and she has to pretend to find the sky so interesting to keep her tears from falling. Her accelerator feels heavy enough to shatter her chest. She breathes through her mouth. 

"Sometimes I wish we still were," Amélie says. Lena thinks of the gap in the their timeline and manages to respond with a hum. 

 

They bridge the gap.

Up on the terrace, always on the terrace, both their hands on the railing and the garden below them with the city beyond. Angela checks on them once in a while along with the others, and Amélie submits herself to routine one-on-one's with Angela in the medbay. 

The rest of Overwatch are on shaky ground with Amélie at best. There's Reinhardt that looks at her like he's just waiting for her to snap— _he's ready._ Fareeha _tolerates_ her with a hard T. Mei is only friendly  _because_ she's friendly, and Satya, while the benefactor of her new legs, regards her like a test subject more than anything. She isn't disrespectful so to speak, and Lena isn't even sure if she means it, to be as objective with the whole affair as she is. 

"The daughter doesn't like me," Amélie observes one afternoon, looking down at Fareeha and Angela talking in the garden. Lena is looking at them too, and inwardly wonders when the _hell_ they'll think to get together. "Understandable, I suppose, as I cost her mother an eye." 

"It's deeper than that," Lena says. Amélie hums like she understands. 

"Some people prefer the straight path and no compromises. We can't fault them for that. It's simpler. Easier to understand." 

Lena coils her arms atop the railing, shooting Amélie a curious look. "Ana seems to dislike you on a particularly personal level." 

Amélie's face sours. Lena is worried for a moment that she said the wrong thing, but then Amélie goes on to say, "I was not a very good person. I think she knew even then." 

Lena braces herself then says, "I still don't know what you mean by that." 

Amélie makes a sound. Like she's amused, almost. She lifts her eyes to meet Lena's. "Do you know why I was so willing to leave Paris and come here with Gérard?" she asks, a bit of a twitch coming to her face at the name. She waits, though, for Lena to finish shaking her head before continuing. "I was running." 

"From what?" 

She thinks that through. Picking a spot to start, testing the waters, deciding the best angle to dive into it. "Consequences." 

Lena waits for it because, what else can she do? She watches Amélie's fingers tense around the railing, tendons sticking out on top, spread like map trails and twining paths. "I did things. To get parts in theaters—it's hard without the right connections, you know?" she says, and it's difficult for Lena to hear. "Do you think becoming a soloist  _anywhere_ comes easily? Comes so quickly? 

"I knew the right people to talk to, in Birmingham. I sought them out. Persuaded.  _Bargained_." She licks her lips, keeps from looking at Lena for the time being. "I used people, and—" 

"Amé—" 

"—then came the Clerkenwell family," she continues seamlessly. Lena knows the name. Lena  _dreads_ the name. "They thought the theater a good foothold. I only needed to talk to the right people, say the right things, get their boys and girls in, and they'd make certain the promotion. They delivered. I became a soloist. The theater was theirs. 

"And then they thought Paris another good expedition after some years. I talked to my foster parents. They agreed— _Paris_ for their retirement and we moved.  _Ballet de l'Opéra national de Paris._ I brought Clerkenwell with me. We worked. 

"The night Gérard came to watch with his mother... he was there for a another purpose." Her eyes are on the horizon, a spectator of her own story, listening as she narrates. "The Clerkenwell were becoming arrogant. They were moving too quickly. They got on law enforcement radars. I was... He didn't suspect me at all. 

"We married without him knowing. And once he found out—I told him, I couldn't just _not_ —he planned to take us away. He accepted the Overwatch appointment—he didn't  _want_ it. Too dangerous, he said. Far more dangerous than the GIGN. Even more work and assignments overseas. Even less time for me, the marriage, a home. But... but he had to—" 

"Save you," Lena murmurs. "I get it, love, I get it. You don't have to..." 

Amélie blinks too quickly for it to seem normal. She continues, "it's all my fault. From the beginning. I sealed his fate there—mine,  _ours._ It's all because of  _me._ " 

"Hey—" 

"I wasn't strong," Amélie continues. "I wasn't like Gérard. Not like you. Not like Overwatch. It's why Talon chose me. I was the easiest. I wasn't a good person—" 

"You weren't  _perfect_ ," Lena interrupts with a hard edge. She says it loud enough that Amélie's eyes snap to focus on her face. "But that doesn't mean you can't be  _good._ " 

"Do you really believe that, Lena?After all you've seen of me?"

"I believe enough for us both."

The wind drifts silent. Fareeha and Angela have gone back into the watchpoint. Under Lena's smoldering gaze, Amélie is slow to take back her hands and turn away. 

 

* * *

 

"You kept my letters." 

Amélie hums, snapped out of a daze. She blinks at Lena and it's dreamlike, the way she does, eyelids slow and mouth only very barely agape. Lena finds it so endearing that, with a smile, she shakes her head and leans back on her chair. 

"Your letters, did you say?" Amélie says anyway, slow to realize it. Her eyes blink more in focus. Clair de Lune plays from a record in the corner of the room and it turns the air light around them, tranquil, lingering. Amélie's other records are in an orderly pile next to the record player. Three of her books are on the bedside, all bookmarked, dog-eared. "Of course I did." Her eyes narrow just so. "You mean to tell me you found them?" 

Lena feels heat climb to her neck and ears. "Completely on accident, believe me. I dropped it. _Ah_ —thought I broke your bloody jewelry box, too." 

Amélie nods. "They were my own... little secret. Something good from my childhood." 

"I've kept yours, too." 

"All of them?" 

"All of them." 

"Mm. I imagine there would've been more if things went as they should've." 

Lena stirs her coffee in silence. Angela has allowed requisition of a table and some chairs in Amélie's room, if only because she got sick of seeing Lena eating her lunch off her lap. The tea and coffee are bonus privileges: " _tea is healthy. It will be good for her,_ " Angela had said. Lena breathes in, and then out. "What happened around that time, anyway?" 

Amélie takes a meaningful moment of pause. She looks like she knows what Lena means. Tens and tens of letters, stamped _RETURN TO SENDER_. Lena's knee bounces under the table. "Unclaimed." 

Lena takes the hit. She feels her ribs weigh. "You never thought to write me again?" 

Amélie looks up from her tea to blink at Lena. She leans back on her chair. "I thought, not yet. Maybe... maybe when I was _done_ , I decided," she says with morose air, though her face remains slack. Lena won't lie and say she doesn't miss the faces Amélie made—the smiles and the frowns and the laughs. Her purple looks lighter next to the window, bathing in sunlight. "Maybe when I had good things to write about I'd write to you again, I thought. You deserved that." 

"You could've told me. When we saw each other again. Here." 

"I was frightened. Weren't you?" 

"Of telling me, of ruining it, of me hating you? Of what exactly?" 

Amélie rolls her bottom lip into her mouth once. She licks her lips. "Of you hating the memory," she says, and her voice is as small as the young French girl she used to be. "It's the one good thing I believe I have of me."  

Clair de Lune carries on like Lena's heartbeat. Lena shakes her head. "I don't think I could ever." 

"Not even now?" 

"Not really, love." 

"Will you ever change?" And Amélie smiles here. Not full, not even the  _half,_ hell no, but one corner of her lips is lifted and her hair gleams iridescent and her jaw is divine, but her skin is  _purple_ , sallow,  _wrong,_ and there are specks of wounds long become scars, and her eyes are still not bright enough, not there enough, faded gold, empty gold, with deep shadows underneath that look almost sickly—but Lena can still only describe the scene as the feeling you get after waking under your covers from a good night's sleep. 

"Would you like me to?" she asks, something like embers dropping to her belly. 

Amélie reaches out and touches Lena's hand. For such cold, cold things, her fingers, they make Lena feel warm. 

"Never." 

Amélie cracks the smile full, and her cheeks don't quite lift like they used to, but she looks like that shower of first light that greets your eyes when you throw the covers off of you. 

 

* * *

 

"I remember liking the weather here," Amélie says one morning, leaned over the railing of the terrace. The season is starting to get colder but still warm compared to what they're used to. "I remember... it was cold in Birmingham. And Paris. I remember liking the mildness of Gibraltar." She leans a little more then, arm stretching, the hand at the end spreading like a fan against the wind. Like she's catching air. Catching memories, piecing them together, digging her hand way in there because she's far past the point of bracing herself. 

"What else did you like about Gibraltar?" Lena asks as she mimics Amélie, like maybe it'll help to catch those memories. Amélie looks sidelong at Lena's spread hand and the bulky bracer on her wrist. 

"You." 

Lena feels herself draw in a length of air, pulls it in deep. She braces herself, heat like a fever wrapping around her throat, broiling slow. She looks at the shape of the city and breathes out. Her leg jiggles. With a breathless laugh, she answers, "yeah?" 

"Mm, _you_ ," Amélie professes simply. "You were always yellow. And orange. And all the bright things I laid eyes on." She glances to the direction of the sun then, only briefly, because it burns, she's said, exposing herself too long to it. "I liked you everywhere I went." 

Below them, Lucio is firing bottle rockets with Hana and Fareeha looks almost impressed. Lena lets the moment linger. Scared to break it, or maybe unwilling to. Or both, she can't tell the difference. She chews her lip and then the tip of her thumb. 

"You were a soldier," Amélie starts up again. The moment dies and another one starts anew. "I remember you telling me this." 

"I was. For the RAF. Pilots. Planes. Fighters, all that." 

Amélie rubs her wrist idly. The bandages are off now, but the jagged lines that are a shade lighter than her skin are still there. "What was that like? The war times?" 

Lena ponders on that. She thinks of— 

 _red skies_ **and ex _plosions_** _and_ the way the  **lights**

 **go _out in_** her com _rades_ eyes

_eyes_

_eyes_

**_lights going_  out**

_laughter_ and laughter  **cut short _no more_ laug**hing

offireandfire **andfireandfire**

 _and the heat of_ **plasma and gunpowder and** _gunsgunsgunsgunsguns_

 ** _beer_** _bottle_ s and vomiting and  ** _casualties, we_ got **another casualty  _here_

 _pictures_ and photo **graphs and**

**deaddeaddeaddeaddead**

_Cyprus is bur **ning**_

_**Paphos is f** alli_ng

jets  **crash landing _and_**

 _of bodies and_ **bodies and _bodies_** and the wa **y _arms and_** _leg_ s look when they're bro _ken_

and  **child** _less parent_ **s and _parentle_** _ss children **and the screams**_

so much  _screaming_

 **and their _names L_** ena remem **bers all of their** _names_

 _—_ and she  _stops_ thinking, going with, " _ugly_ ," not at all oblivious to the waver of her voice. She clears her throat to try to fix that. 

"Is that why you have trouble sleeping?" 

Lena makes a sound, surprised that Amélie recalls that detail at all. "You could say that, yeah." 

"How do you manage it?" 

Lena lets herself smile because she's about to say, "night lights," and the two of them laugh, sure enough, after: Lena's, a little more defined, high and loud. Amélie's, a puff of air out of her mouth. 

"I thought you stopped being afraid of the dark when you turned nine?" 

"I might've lied." 

"Are you alright at all, Lena?" Amélie asks. She looks at her hand, still hanging midair, and pulls it back to furl back around the railing. Lena doesn't do the same just yet. She feels for the answer in the wind, if she'll even find one there. 

"I'm not  _not_ alright," she decides at length, recalling days and years of  _speed_ , of walking too quickly, of running like she's dying, of laughing whenever she's able. Of going through the motions, saving and saving and  _saving_ people, burning herself bright for them and looking high up at the sky so her tears won't fall. She has to stop jiggling her leg because the railing has started to vibrate. "But I'm not quite...  _there_ yet, either." 

"That's fine," Amélie provides and her voice sounds like how the the wind feels, tickling the in-betweens of Lena's fingers. Lena pulls her hand back to the terrace. "It's better not to force it, no? Forcing is friction and friction hurts." 

"Boffin," she professes. Amélie doesn't quite smile, but Lena smiles enough for them both. That's fine, too, she thinks. 

"That is basic Physics,  _chérie_. You are a neanderthal." 

"What's that thing, though, that... what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?" 

Amélie leans toward Lena minutely. "The irresistible force paradox?" 

"Yeah, that's it. What do you think of it?" 

Amélie hums and coils her arms atop the railing to rest her head on. "I think," and she pauses a bit, a thought wrinkle coming between her brows and Lena smiles, leaning closer, one elbow on the railing and chin on her palm. Amélie hums again. "I think they'll _annoy_ each other to infinity." 

 

* * *

 

"I think I was in love with you, for a time," Amélie says as they walk the garden, asking Lena so because the rains might start soon, and it will be a while before she sees the garden bright again. It's not quite as bright right now, though. The sky is overcast. "Or, am still, all the time. I can never decide." 

Lena processes that. Her mouth hangs agape and works, though nothing comes out just yet—a stutter of _um_ , but that doesn't count. Her heart stutters with her mouth. She watches Amélie from behind as they move deeper into the garden. " _Foot_ ," is all she can come up with at length, blurted out like an instinct, and Amélie looks down in time to prevent squashing a snail underfoot. A longer moment, and, tentative, "what do you mean?" 

"To be in love is to think of the other always, no?" Amélie says and it surprises Lena,  _amuses_ her really, that she speaks this like she speaks everything else. All textbook-certainty, voice mild and steady. "I forget about you sometimes. Sometimes for  _long_ periods of time. Some days I don't think of you at all. But when I do, I like it." 

"I don't think it has to be  _always_ ," Lena counters with her recovery and a twitch comes alive on Amélie's brow. It makes her smile—she grins, really, for some reason even _she_ can't grasp well enough and Amélie scowls like she's confused. "We only have so much of us to spread around, y'know? That you think of the other is enough. That you think of 'em when it  _matters_ , too." 

"Did you think of me, then?" 

"Whenever I was able," Lena says with the same text-book certainty, _prove me wrong, I couldn't be_ tone Amélie does. It doesn't fit her, though. No textbook nonsense ever fits her so she grins wider, walking ahead, trying to stop a skip in her step like she's telling the thing in her chest to  _can it_ because at the rate it's pounding the  _entire_ watchpoint will hear. 

"Even when I disappeared?" 

"How about you, on that front?" Lena glances over her shoulder at Amélie. Her palms are sweaty and she wipes them down hard on her leggings, lip bitten and heart pounding. Her ears are warm— _burning,_ actually. 

"There are no bright, yellow-orange things at Talon," Amélie mutters as she watches Lena kneel down before a bed of zinnias. They sway purple and pinks in the breeze. "You didn't answer my question." 

"I did," Lena says after a moment's pause. "I looked for you. Even now, I think of you." 

Amélie says nothing. When Lena stands and hands her a plucked zinnia with a smile, the deepest purple of the bed, she takes it,  _unsure_ , in her fingers and spins it about. "You've loved yourself blind." 

"Isn't that the whole point of it?" 

And Amélie stares at her in all her blankness, a crease between her eyebrows. The crease deepens as she says, "you're grinning like an idiot." 

"I'm not!" 

"You're laughing." 

"I—" Lena stops herself because she kind of  _is,_ and what starts out as a rumble of giggles explodes into laughter and she moves back, just a little bit, waving her hand like  _sorry, sorry, hang on,_ and Amélie's face turns petulant, almost, and it looks so  _nice._

" _Incorrigible_." 

"No— _nop_ _e_ —hang on, Amé,  _wait_ —" 

It's a single drop, at first. One that makes them both pause and look at one another stupidly. And then it's hundreds, and then  _millions_ , raindrops from the sky that fall with the rolling clouds. Amélie  _shrieks._ Lena  _cackles_ like a madman and shouts,  _wait, wait for me_ when Amélie turns to run. 

Lena catches her on the sleeve of her sweater and pulls— _too_ hard, oh, far too hard—and they slip, the two of them. Their feet slide forward and their bodies keel backward and Amélie's shoulder stabs into Lena's chin like a jolt of thunder or just plain  _ouch._ They reel. They fall and it's a mess of limbs and elbows hitting Lena in the gut but she laughs, and laughs, and  _laughs_ , and pulls Amélie back down like _oh, no you don't_ when she tries to sit up. 

"We're  _drenched!_ " 

"Oh,  _rain_ ," Lena croons, looking up for the raindrops to meet her face. She thinks she's crying. She doesn't know—can't be sure because it's raining and it could be the rain on her face or just water making her eyes hurt. Her heart thrums. Raindrops slither into the straps of the accelerator and she's pretty sure she's got grass under her clothes, but she just sits there with her stupid grin and her stupid laugh. 

"You really  _are_ incorrigible, aren't you?" Amélie says distastefully, still seated on the ground. Wet grass is stuck to the folds of the back of her neck and it should be gross, but it's just _endearing_ to see them there. 

"I guess. What's incorrigible?" 

Amélie grunts and looks down at Lena, droplets racing from her hairline to her chin and her eyes are liquid golden and Lena really, really, needs a break to breathe. " _You_ are. Can we  _go?_ " 

"Oi,  _oi,_ yeah," Lena laughs as she stands up with Amélie. She's too light, though. Too light, too bouncy, and she hops more than stands and her accelerator feels tight because her chest is expanding and— _and_ —the rain is  _beautiful_ , with all its refracted colors and the way it turns Amélie's hair the deepest black and the way it softens the earth underfoot. " _Oi_ ," she tries again, and Amélie looks at her with a lifted brow. "Blind, huh?" 

Amélie huffs. Lena tries again, jogs to catch up because  _height differences,_ oh yeah, and blurts out, "I do mean it. I think of you." Amélie pauses. Lena finishes off with, "a lot, yeah." 

" _Blind_ ," Amélie says in conclusion, but then she lets out a breath, her _chuckly_ breath, and her mouth is stretched enough to make Lena giggle again. "This is my first rain in a while." 

"We should enjoy it, then," and then, because Amélie huffs at her, "it's beautiful here. This is wonderful. I love it here." 

_it's beautiful here with you it's wonderful here with you I love it here with you_

_you you you_

Amélie looks at Lena with so much distaste and fondness and surrender:  _fine, fine, whatever you say,_ that Lena doesn't stop herself when she feels like throwing herself at Amélie with a howl. Elbows and knees and oh, fucking  _ouch_ , and Amélie screeches, and Lena laughs, because it might be  _pouring_ but she feels like this is the first time the sun's come up in a long, long while. 

 

* * *

 

Athena wakes her that night. 

It doesn't take much to because Lena's slumber is always light. It starts in urgent whispers, " _Lena, Lena? Lena, wake up,_ " and Lena can't quite place it, what's wrong with that. Maybe the subtle flicker in Athena's voice. Maybe the too-quiet air of the watchpoint. Maybe the sweat pooled in her collarbones, sheets kicked off of her person again. 

" _Nguh?_ " 

" _Lena,_ " Athena says, louder, and Lena sits up to look at the mounted intercomm on one corner of her ceiling. " _Agent Oxton._ " 

"Athena? Athena, love, what is it?" 

" _It is... Amélie_ ," Athena starts, the pause surprisingly human, like the AI thought of one name and picked the other. Lena stands up. " _She is in distress._ " 

"Call up Angela, yeah? Listen, let me just get some clothes on—" 

" _She asked for you._ " 

Lena freezes, sweatpants already pulled halfway up her legs. "I... I wouldn't know what to do, I'm not a doctor—" 

" _She is on her way to you,_ " Athena goes on to say, and then a thoughtful kind of pause. " _Is that okay, Lena? I've opened the doors._ " 

It hardly matters that Lena doesn't really know what to say because the door to her quarters slides open promptly, and Lena is reminded of the deep quiet of the watchpoint when Amélie's footsteps carry loud and clear. Lena rushes to meet her, half-hampered by her sweatpants and heart pounding loud, pounding afraid. "What's wrong, love?" 

"Can't sleep," Amélie murmurs with her arms around herself and Lena doesn't know anything, doesn't have the proper medical training, doesn't  _know_ how bloody therapy works, for crying out loud, but she settles with taking Amélie by the shoulders and Amélie seems contented with that. "I am... afraid." 

"Of what?" 

Lena stays still for an answer that doesn't really come. Amélie shifts under her hands, sways, and in the glow of the room's accelerator, bright as any night light, her eyes are fixed somewhere. "May I lay with you?" 

 _Oh._ Lena nods mutely and watches Amélie walk around her, toward the mess of her bed, and lie on it. Curling, almost. Making herself small. Protecting her front with her arms. She turns, though, when Lena lays next to her and her eyes glow bright with studious observation. 

"What are your nightmares of?" she asks in whisper, more air than sound. Lena chews her lip. 

"Dying," she says in the same volume. "Death. Being lost. Being alone— _I—_ disappearing again. Failing." 

"To save people?" 

"To be a hero." 

"I thought you said it's that one tries that makes them enough of a hero," Amélie says, and her hand comes forward to touch Lena's chest, flattens there, splayed wide like a star. Lena wonders if Amélie could feel the heartbeat as strongly as she can. "You try and you are  _here_ , aren't you?" 

"Our fears aren't the most rational thing in the world." Amélie hums acquiescence. Lena follows slow with, "what are  _you_ afraid of?" 

"Of going _back_ ," Amélie supplies, brows furrowed. "Of not being able to  _come back_ if I ever do that." 

"I'll bring you back," Lena says before she could stop herself. "Take you... home." 

"And where is that? Home?" 

Lena thinks that through. "Wherever you want it to be." 

Amélie seems to ponder that. From Lena's chest, her hand lifts and the fingertips of them rest on Lena's cheek. Cold, hard,  _electric._ "You bring me back," she says, "and I keep you here." 

 _I keep you here_ , Amélie says, and it fills Lena's lungs with air and her eyes with water, and she breathes in like someone's pushed her off the edge and over. 

And it's easy, from there. She'd dash headfirst into a burning building to save whoever's inside. She'd jump that gap if it meant getting to the other side. She'd answer Winston's calls, always, forever, no matter the time. When she kisses Amélie, though, it still feels like it's the easiest decision she's made in her life. 

Amélie is a zinnia, purple, in bloom—fleeting with the light, a vision plunging in shadows when Lena moves above her. She touches so light and kisses so soft and feels so  _cold_ that Lena fears for a moment that she's not there, that she's gone, that she's  _disappearing_ and she holds on because Amélie's said she'll keep her  _here._ Amélie tastes like how smeared watercolors look, how spring smells, how poetry sounds, and even then all of  _these_ aren't enough. 

And Lena's head spins with the sensations, with the longing that aches and spears into her gut like the thrust of a blade going clean through. She's full—full of air, of nerves that sizzle into overdrive, of hot and cold and battling temperatures and her brain clicks like cameras etching the moment into infinity. 

Amélie's lips are butterflies on her shoulders. Her hands are rolling sheets and dragging feathers and when she asks Lena, "do you,"  _want this?_ An incomplete inquiry, the rest of it drowning into nothing because Lena nods her head  _yes,_ all her life,  _yes_ , and Amélie wastes not a single moment to undress and meld them both. Lena moves then, slowly enough to be considered an accident, a  _mistake_ , a rock of her hips rolling forward like waves and Amélie makes the softest sound at the back of her throat. 

When she takes Amélie—and she takes her  _hard_ , she takes her with her fingers and her hands and her mouth—she takes everything, from the scar on her head from Angela's operation to the tips of her prosthetic feet, from the not-quite-life of her breathing and her heart beating to the tattoos that are as foreign as the color of her skin. 

She takes the scars on Amélie's wrists and the demons and  _all_ the bad things, and the memory and the  _now,_ this reality that has her knuckle-deep and panting and sweating. 

And she counts them all off in her head, one-two-threes that extend past forty, the things that are wrong and right and all of them imperfect, and she takes them, takes Amélie as she is, and she is blind blind  _blind_ and she is filled with  _love._

When Amélie seizes up beneath her and whimpers, quiet, long, relieved: her face smolders to life, quiet in bloom, the line of her nose strong and the arches of her cheekbones full. Her mouth opens in a silent scream and her jaw is ethereal, cosmic, lit pallid purple by the moon. She reaches for Lena with both hands and Lena bleeds it all out of her bit by bit until the shakes stop and the tension eases. 

Amélie takes Lena in turn, and Lena feels it all fill up and spill and burst out of her with a lingering whine, toes curled, back tense and arched. 

And it's easy, then, to lie back and close her eyes, spent,  _sleepy,_ for the first time in years, truly sleepy. Amélie whispers in her ear, "good night, Lena," and Lena doesn't care at all suddenly about night lights. She turns under the sheets and keeps Amélie against her. 

She dreams of Amélie and her cold hands, and cold lips, and cold everything. She wonders, even in her dreams, how such cold things feel so warm, hot enough to burn. 

 

* * *

 

Lena wakes to the watchpoint in chaos. 

Everyone's screams come muffled through the walls and the  _bang bang bang_ of fists and feet hitting metal. Lena scrambles to dress and shouts their names,  _what's going on, is everything okay,_ and she doesn't focus on the empty bed and her open door for now. _Not right now._ Her head spins. The watchpoint is sweltering, dizzying, pounding around her like the heart in her chest and she runs so fast she can't feel the floor underneath her. 

All the agent's quarters' doors are locked  _tight._ Athena won't answer through the speakers and Winston shouts at her through his door, " _Athena, check on Athena!_ " Lena nods to no one and scrambles, runs to the computer room with her teammates' howls threatening to break through the walls, mind screaming  _no no no_ shouting  _it can't be, no, why now?_

Athena is down.  _All_ their computers are down. Lena hikes every switch to _on_ and watches in horror as the screens come alive purple. Purple.  _Purple_ , before the color sizzles out in static and dies black. With held breath, she murmurs, "Athena?" and when that does nothing, she shouts, " _Athena!_ " 

The monitors crackle. The screens come alive, one by one, and the Overwatch logo glares bright and angry at Lena from all directions. 

"Athena!" she pants desperately, and the AI answers with an urgent, " _Winston. Someone got on the system. They had the whole watchpoint._ " 

All at once, every door slides open and out rushes everyone, asking Lena what happened, how did she get out,  _where did Amélie go?_

She doesn't know what to tell them. 

 

Amélie took her equipment. Her Widowmaker catsuit and her rifle and all traces of _Amelié_ in the watchpoint. 

Ana and Soldier answer Winston's summons. They check everything. Athena worked for hours, unresponsive, scanning every file and document and registry they have for any more holes, any more ticks, viruses. Traces of who got it and  _how_ they got in and  _when_ they got in and Lena asks these questions herself with her hands tangled up in her hair. There's nothing except for a signature of a flashy, purple skull. The signature is everywhere, every document, every nook and cranny and Winston shuts himself off for days trying to cleanse the systems. 

Ana doesn't say it, but it's in the way she passes Lena wordlessly in the halls and refuses to even look in her direction.  _I told you so, you were wrong, I told you so._ It's in the way Reinhardt shakes his head and Torbjörn purses his lips and Fareeha keeps her head down. 

Lena thinks they hate her. She thinks the only reason Winston doesn't lock her up is because _she_ couldn't have known, she didn't take part it in, she was  _fooled, too._ She was stupid, stupid, stupid and  _all_ of them were, too.

She locks herself up in her quarters. She makes a prison out of her own room and the messy sheets and the empty bed she woke up in that morning. She doesn't leave for days. 

 

Hana brings her meals when she doesn't leave her room even for them. Lucio after her, and then Jesse, and then Mei, with mooncakes and other treats. They talk to her— _try_ to talk to her, and she only nods if she doesn't shrug, or shakes her head if she doesn't do either of those. Hana tells her, "listen, we were  _all_ duped." Lucio offers to play his music. Jesse says something along the lines of tall, pretty women and looks very surprised when Lena doesn't laugh. Mei says the rains are getting lighter and asks if Lena wants to go outside, sometime. 

When it's Angela who comes, finally, it takes every bit of  _Tracer_ in her to not break down and cry. 

"You couldn't have known," Angela tells her. She holds Lena's hand and squeezes, and somewhere in her eyes there's a quiet pain. 

" _I_ should've," Lena says breathlessly. "I should've known. I always should know. I  _should._ " 

 

Winston gets a blip. 

They've been trying for days to get one. Satya had given Amélie her prostheses with a track preinstalled, hooked to Athena with Winston's initiative and Angela's approval. Lena had figured it useless because whoever could get to Athena, dismantle her, _manipulate_ her like they did could easily work a bug like flicking an insect off a desk. 

But Winston gets a blip. It beeps loud and bright on the speakers and the screen and Lena could feel her blood stir under her skin. 

"Why now?" Winston wonders aloud. He pulls up windows, other channels, tries to get an audio feed off the location but all he gets is static. Tries satellite and even that doesn't work. He leans back at length and behind him, the wrinkles on Soldier's forehead is a scowl enough. 

"It's a trap," he says, and Lena can't see the impossibility of that so she keeps her mouth shut. "They've got her again. It's a trap. They're mocking us." 

"So, what, we ignore it?" asks Reinhardt with a scathing edge. Soldier gives him something of a warning look and that gives Lena goosebumps, just briefly, just a little. _Once upon a time, they had a commander..._

"Why would we charge headfirst into something that we know is a trap?" 

"It's a trap but Talon is there. Not much a trap now that we know it is, eh?" Reinhardt says with a heavy scowl. He jerks his chin toward the direction of the screen. The blip gleams taunting. "We come prepared. We will be ready for whatever they've got. We take them down." 

"And what of the risks?" 

"It's not as if it'll be easy even with the knowledge of—" 

"— _why not to turn this to our advantage, instead? If this turns out to be a base—_ " 

"— _we can't be sure, though, can we? If we aren't careful—_ " 

"— _we_ were  _already careful with Widowmaker, and still, somehow,_ somehow _—_ " 

" _—that is not an incentive to continue to be careless_ —" 

The office explodes in arguments. Reinhardt makes an angry declaration with his thick hands. Soldier gesticulates with a shaking head and clenched fists. Zenyatta inserts himself into the fray but his voice isn't loud enough, isn't  _angry_ enough to be heard and Jesse tries to get a word in to no avail. Lena holds her forehead and sighs through her teeth, tired, fuming, hurting, but she sees the blip on the screen go out and then come back. 

She blinks at it. The blip blinks back. 

And again. 

And again. 

And when it goes out again and takes longer to come back on, Lena's mouth falls slack and she squints. 

"Winston?" she tries, but Winston has already gone and inserted himself as a mediator between Reinhardt and Soldier. He's bigger than them both but he looks the  _smallest_ , with the way the two glare each other down and look ready to throw punches. She frowns and drags the nearest chair to sit, staring at the blip as it blinks. "Athena," she says instead, and the AI responds in query. 

" _Yes, Lena?_ " 

"This.  _This._ Are you seeing this? What's happening?" 

A moment to assess it, and then Athena responds, " _deliberate signal interference from the source. The interruptions form a pattern that seem to be Morse._ " Lena opens her mouth for an order but Athena beats her to the punch. " _Decoding now._ " 

The audio and satellite windows minimize to make way for a blank document panel. The letters come slow. The blip continues its blinking. 

_N_

_G_

_..._

_M_

_E_

_..._

_B_

_A_

_C_

Lena leans back with her pounding heart. In her ear, her pulse is deafening, drowning up the voices in the office. Ana comes up behind her and leans over her shoulder, one hand flat on the table in front of the monitor. 

_E_

_E_

_p_

_..._

_Y_

_O_

_U_

Lena looks up at Ana and Ana looks like she doesn't know what it means—how could she, though, really,  _how could she?_ —but her face is grave and her eyes are studious. Lena turns back to the screen and they watch the message complete itself. The pattern carries, doesn't change. Athena has made three full lines of the same message before Ana tells the AI, " _enough,_ " and it's loud enough for even the fight going on in the office to pause. 

"Ana," Lena tries weakly, but she's frightened, doesn't want to be wrong again, doesn't want to be the  _cause_ again so she stops there. Ana meets her eyes. Lena's knee bounces under the table and she chews her lip, feelings half-and-half in her chest and spinning out of control. 

"Soldier," Ana addresses the man without looking at him. "Who do you wager will be perfect for an operation like this?" 

Soldier flinches a little. " _Operation?_ " he sputters, baffled. "What operation? A  _suicide_ operation?" 

"A rescue operation," Ana says as she looks to Soldier now. "Or a  _kill_ operation. We will know on the ground." 

Soldier processes that. He lifts his hand and starts the count off.  _Angela. Winston. Ana. Reinhardt. Himself._ "Lena," he says last, and Lena's fists clench atop her knees.  

"Your commander calls for you," Ana says in a whisper. When Lena makes to glance up, almost snapping a tendon in her neck with the speed and the shock that rabbits her spine, Ana chucks her head back down with a stern hand and a hush. "Your commander calls for you. Will you come or will you not?" 

Lena breathes hard. She looks at the document, the blip, the  _message_ , as clear and sharp as a knife wrenching itself raw into her chest. She thinks of danger, she thinks of traps, of dying and failing everyone and  _promises_ , promises made in the dead of the night and spoken in whispers. 

She thinks of flowers and rain and wet, sticky grass, soft earth under her shoes. She thinks of music and books and and eyes that shine like gold. Rescue or kill. Rescue or kill.  _Rescue or kill._

"There are only two valid answers to a question like this, Lena." 

"I'm coming," Lena says. 

Ana says nothing. She lets Lena's head go and Lena raises her head just enough to see Soldier. To see  _beyond_ the Soldier. "You will either prove me wrong or right this round," she continues with a muscle spasming in her jaw. " _Show_ me how a hero works." 

Lena thinks about it. Running into a burning building. Jumping the gap. Answering the call. Surging forward for the kiss. 

By far, the hardest decision she makes. 

 

* * *

 

Annecy. 

It takes no more than half a day to arrive. Getting to the castle proper without making a ruckus was the only dilemma tedious to overcome: they come to France by air and the rest by land, as much as possible minimizing alerting  _anyone_ , civilian or foe. It does not necessarily help that Annecy is small and bathing simplicity, and attention is something quick to get. 

When they get there, disembarking from the boats and looking up at the chateau in the dusk light, Lena already feels it. Tension. Energy.  _Fear._

A rescue operation or a kill mission. They're on the ground now. 

Soldier is quick to give out commands— _Soldier_ still, Soldier now, maybe forever, Lena hopes not forever. "No one wanders without a teammate immediately ready to assist," he says. "We still don't know what this is. Stay on your guard. 

"And _don't_ do anything reckless." 

Lena can't help a smile around this part. She ejects her pistols, feels them hum in her hands. She flexes her fingers and lets the hum of the accelerator burrow to her bones. 

"Can't get any less reckless than me, love." 

The resulting scoffs and huffs are a little insulting, a little _uplifting_ , so normal and familiar that she leads the charge into the castle. 

It's dark, is the first obvious thing. Quiet the second. Light enters the lobby feeble and cloaks the burgundy carpets in silver. "Not without a teammate," Soldier reminds them. "Attention to your surroundings and your comms." 

Mercy is quick to report to Tracer's side—Tracer's small, Tracer's fast but _fragile_ —but Ana tells her, "you go with Winston," and Mercy would've fought her on it, had Ana not gone on to say, "are you fine with us going together, Tracer?" 

Mercy looks at Tracer grave. Nobody has forgotten their screaming battle in Winston's office. Tracer nods, though, and Mercy hesitates but ultimately goes to Winston's side. 

"I don't like your healing," Tracer tells Ana. Ana only snickers. 

"Don't get hit and I won't have to heal you." 

Tracer takes it slow, for once. She prowls with firearms raised and Ana hangs back similar. A sniper for a sniper.  _An eye for an eye._

She doesn't like to think of it like that. 

"What will you do if she shows up?" Ana asks much, much later. They're prowling a wing empty save for nasts and dusts. Tracer is almost afraid to breathe in just because of the filth. She accidentally kicks a bottle of wine on the floor and it whines, grinding, and they both flinch. 

" _Sorry—_ I... I don't know." 

"Shouldn't it be a given that you shoot the bad guy?" Tracer purses her lips. She says nothing. "Or do you still maintain she's not one?" 

"Why did you push for this operation, Ana?" Tracer asks with fire under her tongue. "Why did you push for me to be here? Why call the possibility of a  _rescue_ mission at all?" 

They stalk silent for a time. Tracer is almost sure the conversation has dropped until, "I wanted to see what you so  _surely_ see," Ana answers. "I want to know what that message means." 

Only then does the conversation drop. Tracer lets Ana's response hang and it fades, dying. 

" _Tracer, Ana. Anything on your end?_ " 

"None, Soldier," Ana answers for them both. "Mercy? Winston?" 

" _It almost seems this place is empty. Did we even go to the right place?_ " Mercy says on the line. " _Maybe we misread the significance of the blip? Maybe the prostheses were just disposed of here?_ " 

"No, we're on the right track," Tracer says. Ana gives her a dubious look that quickly turns firm: "Amélie's ancestry traces back to aristocrats here during the revolution. This is her home." 

"How do you know this?" Ana asks as she cuts the line. 

"I've been here. I came here before I found out she'd been taken by Talon. I was still looking." She swallows. Ana says nothing more. 

They come to a common room, then. A grand room with high ceilings and high windows, lit only by natural light filtering in through the glass. Tracer lets her pistols flip back to look around the scene. Ana shoulders her rifle. 

Computers are set up on the far wall. Multiple screens, lit up and flickering with activity, documents blinking and photos and videos and so, so many files glitching in and out. Tracer looks at the corner by the entryway and notices a quaint device—a circular pad of something on the floor, almost resembling a generator of sorts. She's about to point it out to Ana when Ana saunters past her to approach the computer set up, announcing, " _Tracer_." 

She points to one of the screens with a finger and Tracer bends to see, nearly going cross-eyed with the heavy wall of characters pulled up and scrolling on an active window. Ana hits a key and the scrolling pauses long enough for Tracer to make out several comprehensible lines. "Does this say  _Athena?_ " 

"Athena's code," Ana confirms with dire air. They shift their attention to several other screens and only then does Tracer notice the droplets of blood under one monitor. She reaches under there and her fingers come into contact with sheaths of plastic. ID cards. Employees and scientists under— " _Talon_ ," Ana says breathlessly, and Tracer looks up. Ana hits another key. 

The glitching stops. The windows still. Tracer reels back, dazed, and her eyes blink a furious pace while Ana looks on, motionless as a statue. 

Amélie's face litters the screens. She is brown on some: caramel, soft, flawless, and then there's blood, and blotches of purple, and scalpels and snapshots of weapons, body parts, prosthesis models—

—and then she's purple, and blank, and she has needles dug deep under her skin and her eyes are empty and one particular video plays  _she screams, she's screaming, she's begging, she's asking where she is_ and the audio cuts off and is abruptly replaced by a drone of voices narrating  _progress, tests, results, assignments_ —

 _Gérard Lacroix_ , they both hear, and then the definitive gunshot of that rifle,  _her_ rifle, and an amplified recording of a slow, slow,  _slow_ heartbeat— 

" _Someone's here,_ " Winston rasps on the line. Ana tears herself from the set up and her hand trembles on the comm in her ear. " _In the shadows, movement_ —"

"Where?" Ana asks. The line cuts to static then. Tracer's pistols flip. Ana raises her rifle. On the line, a woman's dragging, silky voice speaks. 

" _Ay, t_ _hey've found us._ " 

By the room's entryway, the device—teleporter,  _teleporter_ —bursts to life and from the purple glow, out steps a woman. She smirks at them, doesn't even see it fit to raise her hands or show any sign of surrender when guns aim at her. In fact, the ruffian chuckles. 

"Might want to leave this room now,  _mis amigas_ ," she chirps. "If you'll follow me  _this way._ " 

"No way in _he_ —" 

" _Ana,_ " Tracer says hoarsely. Out the window, twin black aircrafts are making their approach, guns already primed and Ana, gaping, breathing hard, blurts, " _lead the way,_ habibti," and all three of them scramble out of the room. 

As they're sprinting down the corridor, the whine of gattling guns fills the hall and glass explodes, shatters, and the three of them book it down the nearest staircase. Bullets puncture the walls and twice,  _twice,_ Tracer feels grazes on her person. 

"Soldier?  _Soldier?_ Fuck, the line's still—" 

"Ah, right, sorry," says the purple woman. She flicks a switch on her bracer and the yells of her teammates exploding so suddenly to focus on the comms make Tracer flinch. 

" _Aircraft!_ " Winston bellows. 

"Two! There's two!" 

" _Three!_ " Soldier grunts. " _One more here. It's dropping men!_ " 

" _Missile_ _!_ " Mercy shrieks. " _Winston—_ " 

An explosion jars the line and Ana sucks a furious bout of air in. Tracer shouts for Mercy and Winston thrice, _four_ times until she drops an expletive and blinks ahead of her companions. 

Ana knows her place like this when she's partnered up with Tracer. She lags behind and the purple woman runs with them, muttering under her breath while arming herself with her own gun.

Tracer zips in zigzags, a furious ray of blue light burning bright, legs working overtime and accelerator thrumming angry. An explosion sounds out before her and shatters the path, throws her back, but she recalls— _bang bang_ goes her heart, jumping with the shock—and jumps over the hole on the floor. A teleporter sails in the air with her and comes to life as soon as it lands, the purple woman blooming out in a vague sheen of violet light. Ana  _leaps_. She propels herself over the gap and both Tracer and the other woman are quick to snatch her by the forearm when her jump falls short. They pull her up. 

Grunts in black meet them on the next turn. Tracer whiplashes, kicks one right in the face and shoots three down before winding back, pulling a somersault to avoid gunfire. The purple woman fires in quick bursts and Ana, in contrast, fires slow, sure, smooth. Not one of her shots miss. They've cleared the hall by the time Tracer lands. 

And it hurts, when she lands. A circle of red blooms on her thigh and she clutches it, breathes fierce through her nose before continuing. 

" _Mercy! Winston!_ " she shouts. Nothing.  _Nothing._ "Ange, come on! Winston, buddy, answer me!" 

They mow more grunts in the way and narrowly avoid another range of bullets from the gattling aircraft. The holes on the wall trail in messy zigzags and Ana shoves Tracer's head down with a grunt as the gunfire riddles the air above them. Tracer huffs, keeps her head down, and they run.

An explosion sounds from somewhere else in the chateau. She imagines Soldier cornered. She imagines Reinhardt's barrier dwindling. Mercy and Winston down. She  _runs._

When someone comes up in front of her, wielding a rifle and colored head to toe in purple with seven red eyes, only then does she stop. 

Amélie turns to her, face blank and jaw tight. She raises her rifle. Tracer's breath dies in her chest. 

Amélie  _shoots._ Tracer feels the sharp whistle of air above her head, hears the heavy thump of a body falling to the floor. She glances over her shoulder and the body of a grunt lays akimbo behind them, blood quick to pool around his head. Ana stares on in shock, gun raised and ready to fire until moments ago—the vaguest black shades the tip of her cowl, friction from the bullet, strings of smoke still fresh. 

Tracer turns back to Amélie. More grunts file in. She raises her pistols. Amélie, her rifle. They  _dance._

Tracer slides when Amélie pirouettes. They are each other's fronts, and then backs, and lefts and rights and the gunfire doesn't stop, and when Tracer shouts out because a shot goes through her shoulder, Amélie picks up the slack and shields her while she recovers. 

" _Left_ ," Amélie will say, and Tracer will shoot. " _Right_ ," Tracer will say, and Amélie will shoot. Tracer spreads her fire while Amélie reloads. When Amélie arms and throws a venom mine, she slaps one hand to Tracer's nose and mouth and pulls her away, shouting to the other two, " _steer clear of the smoke!_ "

Another explosion shakes the chateau. Surrounded by corpses, Amélie breathes one long, hard inhale and pops her neck. The cloud of the venom mine dissipates in their peripheries. Blood blossoms on Amélie's bicep. 

"Amé," Tracer alerts her, but all she does is look at it, shrug, and shake her head. 

"More important things." 

"Like why'd you go?" 

Tracer thinks that's better delivered angry—it fits it certainly—but she just sounds hopeful. Hurt. Betrayed. And Amélie's face is scrunched _exactly_ like it sounds like those things. 

"For myself," she says. "I had to do it myself." 

"You could've told me— _us_. We could've helped!" 

Amélie shakes her head. " _Myself_ ," she repeats, firm, certain. "I had to go myself." 

And Tracer understands, she supposes. She looks at Amélie's face, and her wounded arm, and her hands (her wrists, _her wrists_ ) and thinks of the tens and tens of pictures of Amélie and Widowmaker and Talon, and the audio feed of a woman screaming above the drone of voices that say _commence,_ that say  _tests_ , that say  _break her break her break her._ She feels the pound of her heart and the memories whirring in her brain and decides that _no_ , she _does_ understand. She takes Amélie's hand. 

"Okay," she says with a nod. "Okay. 

" _Other_ important things," Tracer remarks. She looks to Ana and the other woman to say, "we split up here. Winston and Mercy are top priority."

Ana looks like she might argue that for a strangling length of time. She stares long at Tracer, _longer_ at Amélie, and had it not been for the purple woman calling out, " _we're running out of time,_ amiga!" she wouldn't stir to action. She nods to Tracer. Regards Amélie with a tight-lipped expression, face painting old wounds, old scars, old, old angers, and says, "be careful, the both of you. Stay on the line." 

Amélie slings her rifle over one shoulder. Tracer primes her accelerator, ready to kick it to action anytime. They run together. Above them, the rattle of gattling guns and all around, explosions. A great tremor underfoot accompanies the latest blast and Amélie hisses for her ancestral home.

Tracer taps back into the line. "Ana, have you had anything from Soldier?" 

" _None, now that you've mentioned it. Reinhardt also—_ "

"Vieja _, should you really be in a call right now? And_ you  _say_ we _can't get off our phones._ " 

" _Why you—_ " 

"Sombra," Amélie speaks on her own comm and Tracer starts when she hears her voice on the same channel. "Two more aircrafts. I have taken down one. I cannot get a clear enough shot of the two without having to risk getting seriously shot." 

" _I'm in a fucking firefight, Amé!_ " 

"You've multitasked before." 

" _You know, sometimes I don't know why I let you bother me like this—hang on,_  abuela! _I'm hacking a stupid aircraft here!_ " 

" _Do you need cover or not?_ " 

"Okay,  _I'm sorry._ There _, how's that?_ " 

They turn the corner together and charge into rooms, searching, firearms at the ready. They clear two corridors before Amélie alerts Tracer, "Lena!" and Tracer blinks, zips past her and straight into the room. 

A huge, gaping hole sits at the corner, the night sky open and full outside. Wind is rushing in. Mercy and Winston lay unconscious on the floor, bleeding. Mercy's side weeps scarlet. Winston's head is all reds. Debris from the blast and shrapnel stains their surroundings. Around them, Talon grunts lay dead with shattered ribs and limbs. Shotgun, point blank. 

Tracer thinks she imagines it when she notices a flick of something like smoke leave out of the hole. 

"Angela first," she prompts Amélie. "And then Winston." 

" _Tracer?_ " 

"Soldier, I found them! Mercy and Winston are down!" 

" _I can't find Reinhardt,_ " Soldier says raspily, hoarse, dizzy. He makes a sound like he's in pain and gasps. " _Knocked out... I was knocked out._ " 

Tracer curses. Amélie is calm as they take Mercy under the arms and carry her to the corridor. "I'll be right with you, love! Hang on!" 

She wheezes when they set Mercy down, clutching her thigh. Amélie reaches for her but she shakes her head, says  _I'm fine, love, I'm fine._ Amélie frowns, but they attend to Winston because  _quickly,_ they need to move  _quickly._

Quickly. Like how that grunt emerges from the adjacent room with a machine gun at his side, one leg bent at the wrong angle, one side of his face burned, charred clumps of muscle. He primes the machine gun at them both and Tracer acts the only way she knows how. 

She blinks forward, a single zip of blue. Amélie yells. The gun whines and Tracer blinks to the side, takes him head on and knocks him to the floor. Pain flowers her chest, drips wet down her abdomen. She recalls. She tries to recall. She  _cannot recall._

A heavy mist of rumbling, black smoke sweeps past her and crashes full against the grunt with a reverberating growl. She cannot recall.  _She can't recall._

Amélie shouts her name from the hallway. Somewhere in the chateau, another explosion.  _She can't recall can't recall can't recall_

She looks down at her accelerator and it's shattered, in pieces, the blue light close to dead. She can't breathe. She can't see herself. She screams and it echoes back at her  _at her at her at her_

and she crumbles 

 **she** _crumb **les**_

 _she_ **crum** _bles_

She whips her head around, sees Amélie has knelt over her but she's slipping  _cold cold cold dark dark dark_ and when they reach for each other, she feels Amélie's hand for only a second 

a second

 _ **one** se_ **con** _d_

_sec **ond**_

Amélie shouts. 

don't 

_let_

**go**

 

* * *

 

_how long_

_ho **w lo** ng ha_ **ve you** _be_ en 

_here_

**drif**

_ting_

_g_ one gone _go **ne gonegonegonegon** egoneg_ **one can't**

 _go_ **gogo** _go_

back

 _c **an't go** back ca_ **n'tgoba** _ck_

 _she **floats and feels the d** arkness ar_ound her neck around her fingers _arou **nd her chest she feelsfee** lsfeels _

**darkness and feels darkness dyingdyingdying**

_it'_ **s telephone and** _the 4 am **rings and Patri** ce's v_oice crackles on the line 

you're uselessuselessu _s **eless how could you let them die ho** w could you dis _

**_ap_ **

_pear_

_th_ **e darkness forms** _Patty's face **and she's got foam in her mou** th foamf **oamfoam Patrick screams as** he g_ oes down on the plane and

 _d_ **iesdiesdies dies lights going o** _ut of thei_ **r eyes like blinking C** _hristmas lights and_

the TV is wailing the funeral march and so _mewh **ere people laug** h _

_**laughscreamlaughscreamlaughs** creamlaughscream _

war let's talk about war _warwar **you're supposed t** o be de _

_addead **eadead but you're still he**_

_erehereh_ erehere you're gone gone gone

 **Lena cries and swims and flails** _her limbs bu **t they're like lead they'r** e like dead they're all fucking dead _

 _the_ tape recorder reels back and screeche _s screec **h screeches Mondatta rumbles in the distan** ce and shouts _

_they're_

all 

**dead**

do ** _thatagaindothatagaindo_** thatagain not right no _t right not right don't recall yo_ u useless bitch die 

**diediediediediedie**

she **feels the heat of a burning co** ckpit and chok _es on nothing she can't breathe she can't breathe she doesn't hav_ e her respirator 

_going dow **n down dodododown**_

s _ **he doesn't recall and takes the shot** _ to her ches **t and falls and dididididiesdiesd** iesdies 

s _he sways back someone carr_ ies h **er her fingers twitchtwitch**  

_help me help help me_

**Amélie smiles behind the scope of her gun looks like** the _party is fucking over it's fucking o_ ver 

sta _y someone says stay and the hand around_ her ar **m is cold it's so col** d 

 _she breathes and cries help_ me 

a **nd she sees Amélie and Amélie is** reachi _ng outoutout Lena tries to ta_ k **e her hand**

y **ou're gone gone gone gonegonegone** not here 

not _dead not here not d_ ead not here 

ju _ **st fucking gonegogoneeegone**_  

_Winston, please hurry_

_Angela, Angela hand me those wires_

_Amélie, don't let her go_

A _ **mélie Amélie A**_ mélie Lena _shouts into the_ dark and 

 _gar **dens and rain and the smell of wet wet gra** ss and th_ **e droplets on the flowers shimmering** _shimmering_

 _it's_ wonderful here it's b _eautifu **l it's love I love it her** e with _

_you you you you_

**Lena clings to the** _pouring_ rain and wet grass and shuts h ** _er eyes and_**

 _r_ **eaches for the wind like there are answers there ans** _wers answers me **mories and**  _

 _ **Amélie smiles in that no** t quite_ **reaching her ey** _es way and_

Amélie is so much brighter tha _n the **moonlight and she tel** ls Lena _

_I'll_

_keep_

_you_

_here_

_Lena_ **clings and clings and swi** _ms and reaches out_

_you're here_

_you're here_

_It's okay. Yyyou're_

bre _ **athe breathe brea**_ the 

_It's okay, Lena. You're here. You're here. I've got you. Don't let go. Don't let go._

d _ **on'tdon'tdon't Amélie d** on't let me go_ 

_I'll keep you here just don't let_

_don't let go_

" _I have you,_ chérie _. Don't let go._ " 

 

* * *

 

Lena wakes to light. Bright. Sterile.

Unforgiving. It hurts her eyes—enough that she shuts them again for all of ten seconds to give her head some peace. She tries that again, slower this time.

Light.

Her body is numb. She takes a deep breath and looks into the bright, blinding orb above her with squinted eyes. She allows her brain a step back: two, three.

Gunfire. Explosions. A machine gun. Intercomms bursting static and people yelling like they’re dying. People reaching out. Her, reaching, too, heavy arms, hands like carved with lead, feels like flailing around underwater. A cacophony of voices in her head, and faces,  _so many_ faces, and the smell of blood and destruction and smoke. And then—

 _ **da** rkda **rkd**_ **arkd** ar _kd_ a **rkdark**

— _light_. She focuses on the light. Blinks at the light. Breathes the light in. Feels it burning her brain raw and it feels good, better than the other thing. 

Numb. _Numb_. She wiggles her toes. 

Is she dead?

Maybe.

 _Maybe_.

**Maybe.**

She remembers the moistness on her chest, the dripping to her stomach and the pool under her knees like water, like surf and waves crashing, dragging her into the murk of the sea and lower. She wiggles her toes, blinks. Light. Can’t see anything.

She bobs her head and realizes she’s on a pillow. Inclined. Something is stuck to her arm. Something is in her nose and guides gentle, steady air into her lungs. Something _beep-beep-beeps_ by her head and she allows herself to listen to it, beeping, over-loud, so vivid and living. Her chest weighs heavy, but not the right kind of heavy. She twitches, shakes her legs like a shudder and blows a breath out like a gust of winter. Something soft bobs under her.

Bed?

 _Bed_.

**Bed.**

Clarity. Medbay, comes the thought, and she breaks past the light to assemble shapes. A TV on the wall. Cupboards. Trays. Lumps below her, her feet under the covers. Smells medication, smells disinfectants. Sees machines by her bedside and the green, green lines that indicate heartbeats. 

Not dead.

 _Not dead_. Something is furled around her hand. Heavy. Cold. Tight. She shakes her skull a little more and squints: _looks_. Light. Shapes. Colors.

Purple. Cold, like the dead. She squeezes her fingers and she feels a squeeze back. Cold. Alive. Purple. _Purple_. 

Shapes. Colors. Hair, face. Purple. 

Amélie’s head rests by her hand, one of her own wrapped there, tight. She’s so still she almost looks like she isn’t breathing. She’s so still she almost looks like she isn’t real. She's so still, so heavy, so concrete that Lena tells herself no, this is real, this is real and there are lights and there is air and she can feel her heart beating. 

Crying. Lena is crying. She lifts her free hand, smears it shaking across her cheeks. She sniffles, chokes, gasps, _breathes_. Breathes in the light. Breathes in the shapes, the colors, life, _Amélie_. 

Lena feels herself laugh. It hurts to. Her chest is tight and it throbs but she laughs, and she cries, and she squeezes Amélie’s hand with _all_ of herself, all of her light, and breaths, and tears, and life. She laughs with  _all_ of herself, all of her heartbeats and all of the pain that squeezes her rib cage tight. She  _laughs._

Amélie stirs. She rolls her face on the mattress and blinks, bleary-eyed, tight-browed. She raises her head and looks at Lena and— 

light

breaths

life

—her eyes go wide, her jaw goes tight, and Lena cries, and cries, and _cries_. 

"Cheers, love," she tries to say. She _manages_ to say. Her throat scratches and her mouth is dry but she’s laughing and she’s _alive_.

"Lena," Amélie says. Like a dolt. Like bonfires coming alive. Like the slow bloom of flowers in the sunlight, petals unfurling, smiling a sunshine smile. Her other hand reaches forward and brushes Lena’s face gentle, sheet-skin soft, taking with her fingers droplets of Lena’s tears. She blinks. Her face is slack. Her mouth is a lopsided line. Under her eyes there are deep shadows that tell of sleepless nights. 

But her tears run thick, and shining, and full, and Lena feels _life_ with the way she laughs and winces and laughs again. She clutches her rib cage with an arm. Amélie starts, jumps to her feet from her seat at the bedside and announces, "I’ll fetch Angela. I’ll—" 

" _No_ ," Lena rasps, sobs, guffaws. She pulls until her hand is around Amélie’s wrist and begs, "stay, stay, _please_ , here. Just stay here."  

"How do you—" 

"Fine," she cuts off, desperate, begging still. She tugs Amélie’s wrist again and Amélie surrenders. Amélie sits back down and surges forward and fits her face on the indent of Lena’s neck and collarbones. Her tears are cold. Her tears are plenty. Her breaths hitch, scrape, lungs not used to quick bursts of air. Lungs not used to living. Amélie powers through and cries, shoulders slow to shudder, fingers clenching tight around Lena's hand. 

"You were gone. Two months," she explains, and her tone is textbook, so bloody _textbook_ Lena hears the laugh rumble out of her chest before she could stop it. "And then you wouldn’t wake up. Twice that. Four months I’ve been here." Her fingers loosen with tremors. "I  _thought_ we wouldn't get you back—" 

"I’m,"  _sorry_ , Lena wants to say, but her throat dries out and she rasps wordless. Amélie pulls back, _water_ , she says, but Lena lives and that’s _enough_ , there’s water later, tonight, tomorrow, and she pulls Amélie back with enough force to hopefully prove her point. 

It gets through, at least, but not without a disapproving scowl.

It melts away to something softer when Lena hums, and Amélie breathes out like she hasn’t breathed out for a long, long time. Her shoulders quiver. Her back hunches. And finally, _finally_ , she exhales that length of air she dares call a laugh. And it's beautiful, it's wonderful, it's a gentle breeze and that feeble ray of sunshine at the foot of your bed, that little stutter that you get in your chest when you see the world at dawn and it is too  _beautiful._

Lena laughs for them both, scratchy like sandpaper and tight coughing fits. She tugs Amélie again, and Amélie glances up. 

"You look tired," Lena says, ultraslow. Amélie laughs in that way she laughs and wipes her face with the sleeve of one arm. She sniffles, nods, face thoughtful.

"Haven’t slept much," she supplies. “Waiting, _c_ _hérie_ , waiting." 

Lena nods and lets her head fall back onto the pillow, sinking, heavy. She sighs. She squeezes Amélie’s hand. "I’m sorry." 

"Don’t be." 

"Soldier?" she queries later, head turning on her pillow. "Winston? Ana? Reinhardt?" 

Amélie’s lips quirk in that way they always do. Modest, just enough to make Lena’s heart tremble. _Just enough_ to make Lena question what kind of heavenly body Amélie would be if she were one. Became one. Hoped to be one. "Alive." 

And it feels so good to hear that. Breathe that. See and smell and feel— _alive_.

" _Amélie_ ," Athena’s voice comes through the speakers, and Lena feels herself jolt, murmur _Athena_ with so much relief. " _Winston requests your presence in his office. New Talon documents are available for your perus_ —" 

A crackle. Suspiciously like someone blowing through a compact microphone, and then the wailing feedback of said microphone. Someone coughs on the speakers.

" _Hey. You. Yeah, you. Gorilla._ Hey _. I know you can hear me. Don’t interrupt. I swear, the people here…_ "

Static. A hum, the sound of something booting up. Silence, and then:

" _Winston, I would appreciate if you tell operative Sombra_ again _to please stop doing that_." 

And Lena laughs anew, clutching her ribs again because it hurts but what can stop her to, anyway?

"Don’t strain yourself," Amélie chides, and Lena shakes her head _mm-mm_ because she deserves this, wants this, needs this. She will laugh all she wants and she will feel it hurt all she wants and she will push and push and push it because she's  _here._ Amélie's next sentences come out firm. "You were wounded— _are_ wounded. Delicate. Don't force yourself." 

Lena strains herself _exactly_ and pulls Amélie forward until Amélie rises, and falls, and curls up with her on the hospital bed. 

They’re tired, now. Tired. It comes with living. It comes with being alive. 

"Amé," Lena croaks. Amélie hums, raises her head just so, and her chin finds the curve of Lena’s shoulder, avoiding the tubes and wires aiding with her breathing. "Take me to the garden tomorrow?" 

"Mm. If it doesn’t rain." 

Lena laughs, turns her head, rests her cheek on Amélie’s crown. "What if it rains?" 

Amélie’s breaths burrow deep. Lena lifts her head a tad, sees Amélie’s eyelashes against her cheek, her mouth a slack line, her eyebrows settled tight. Lena pushes her thumb against the in between of them until they loosen. Amélie takes a deep, too-long breath, and releases it in a quiet snore. 

If it rains, they sleep some more. Mm, okay. 

Lena lets her head drop back onto the pillow with a smile. She squints up at the light. 

"Light," she says, hoarse, and Athena kills the lights. Darkness engulfs the room. A dull, blue glow peers from the far corner and Lena can’t be bothered to look at it closely enough because she’s tired.

Amélie shifts against her, mumbles nonsense, snores again. Lena closes her eyes.

 

Lena had watched the words form on the blank document line. In her peripheral, the blip went on and off, on and off, spelling out the words while Athena wrote them down. Letters came like dew dripping slow off blades of grass. Words sprouted like sunsets smearing unnamed colors on the horizon. 

_YOU BRING ME BACK AND I KEEP YOU HERE_

_YOU BRING ME BACK AND I KEEP YOU HERE_

_YOU BRING ME BACK AND I KEEP YOU HERE_

_YOU BRING ME BACK_

_...and I keep you here._

 

_She came to meet her there. On the tire swing. Too-long legs. Too short clothes. Long hair swaying in the breeze. Alone._

_I'm Lena_

_I am... Amélie_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you. :')


End file.
